Question

Whats the difference between Cast & Convert in C# 2008?

Answer 1

Cast will allow you to convert certain data types safely, eg. double-> int

double a = 3.5;
int b = (int) a; //fraction will be truncated

Here cast is taking the binary representation of 3.5 and putting it into integer representation. Because integer doesn’t have fractions it is dropped and also allowed. Casting a string to an integer in this way is not so simple and not allowed by the compiler.

Convert is smarter and convert more data types from one to another, eg. string -> boolean

string myString = "true";
bool myBool = Convert.ToBoolean(myString);

Also see this stackoverflow discussion on this topic.