Hi, I just moved over from vb.net to c#.net...

I'm under the impressin Implicit conversion (in this example anyway) is the ability to cast one datatype to another, and since c# does not primarily support this. I'm a little confused as to how this is done, in my programs I am constantly getting this:
"Cannot convert method group 'ToString' to non-delegate type 'string'. Did you intend to invoke the method?"

failing that, I get an error that implicit conversion is not possible.

EDIT: this is a code snippet of a working conversion i bodged together.




text[] and key[] are both Char arrays, and as you can see my code is long and not efficient.

To my point:
Does anyone know of any resources that will aid me in my understanding of this problem,
or of a simple tip that i could do with?

many thanks in advance,

~Smithy

This post has been edited by Smithy963: 25 May, 2008 - 12:15 PM

Geeky computer definitions: implicit and explicit. Implicit means that it's a given, it's understood. If you put an int value into a float variable you just can, because you don't loose anything, even though the container changes. However, if something changes the nature of a value, the complier will choke on it. When you get an implicit conversion issue what's you're really being told is that you have to explicitly convert it. Explicit meaning you have to spell it out.

This may work:

Note the cast value. Sometimes you really are significantly changing the value and you need the Convert suit. Read more here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa691289(VS.71).aspx

Hope this helps.

Thank you for your post, I have a better understanding of implicit now.



The bolded, and underlined snippet(I've never seen until now), is used when I wish to pass a datatype, to a variable that is not the said datatype, eg.



And this can be used in a variety of ways and with different datatypes?

Thanks,

~Smithy

Well only data types that are similar in structure and considered "safe" to convert. For example you can cast a double to an int and an int to a double. You can't cast anything to just something else. If you create an object of type "person" and you want to convert 3 to this person, what does that mean? You can't convert the number 3 to a person class unless otherwise spelled out by the person class. 3 and Person are two dissimilar items and thus are not directly casted to one another typically unless defined to do so.

So in short you can only cast between datatypes if a cast operation has been defined. One has been designed for int and double, but that is why you must define one for your Person object.

You can start your reading on the subject at the following page...

Casting (C#) - MSDN

Look into the "reference" links for this MSDN page and check out the () operator to learn how to create your own casting operations for objects.

Enjoy!

This post has been edited by Martyr2: 25 May, 2008 - 02:54 PM

Martyr's link covers it. There has to be some kind of built in logic to handle it. The notation is also used for "unboxing" objects ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yz2be5wk(vs.80).aspx ).

Where this notation fails the covert class can be the answer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.convert.aspx

Lets take a look at in brief about Implicit and explicit
conversions.

http://vb.net-informations.com/language/vb..._conversion.htm

thanks.