Question

I know the ‘default’ keyword returns the default value of a statically determined type, as shown for instance in this question.

However, given an instance of a type, is there a simple way to get the default value of this type, dynamically ? The only way I found while googling is this :

static object DefaultValue(Type myType) {     if (!myType.IsValueType)         return null;     else         return Activator.CreateInstance(myType); } 

But I’d like to avoid the Activator class if possible.

Answer 1

This is likely your best route.

I wouldn’t be afraid of using the Activator class here. This is a pretty standard class that is depended on by the compilers. For instance this VB code

Public Sub Example(Of T as New)()   Dim x = new T() End Sub 

Translates into roughly this code

Public Sub Example(Of T As New)()   Dim x = Activator.CreateInstance(OF T) ENd Sub