Question

My particular problem:

I have a string which specifies an aribitrary type in a configuration class

Config.numberType = 'System.Foo';

where Foo is a type like Decimal or Double

I use Type.GetType(Config.numberType) to return the corresponding type.

How do I get from that type to being able to use, System.Foo.TryParse() ?

Some further related queries

• TryParse() can be accessed from System.Foo.TryParse() as well as foo.TryParse(). Does this mean foo is some kind of class in C#? This seems weird to me that int, double etc are actually not just modifier keywords.
• How can you declare variables under these circumstances? – var is not universally usable it seems i.e. only in local scope etc.

Answer 1

As many have said – there isn’t a direct route. I expect one close option is TypeConverter:

    Type type = typeof(double);     string text = '123.45';      object value = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(type)         .ConvertFromInvariantString(text); 

Of course, you may need try/catch to handle exceptions. Such is life.