Possible Duplicate:
Casting: (NewType) vs. Object as NewType
Casting vs using the 'as' keyword in the CLR
What is the difference between these 2 types of conversion(as i’ve seen, they don’t work both all the time) :
ClassA a = (ClassA)someClassObject;
and
ClassA a = someClassObject as ClassA
Per http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cscsdfbt%28v=vs.71%29.aspx (emphasis mine):