Question

In C#, is there a way to instantiate an instance of a class without invoking its constructor?

Assume the class is public and is defined in a 3rd party library and the constructor is internal. The reasons I want to do this are complicated but it would be helpful to know if it’s possible using some kind of C# hackery.

NOTE: I specifically do not want to call any constructor so using reflection to access the internal constructor is not an option.

Answer 1

I have not tried this, but there is a method called FormatterServices.GetUninitializedObject that is used during deserialization.

Remarks from MSDN says:

Because the new instance of the object is initialized to zero and no constructors are run, the object might not represent a state that is regarded as valid by that object.