Is There Any Need To Boxing And Unboxing

Introduction

With Boxing and unboxing, one can link between value types and reference types by allowing any value of a value type to be converted to and from a type object. Boxing and unboxing enable a unified view of the type system wherein a value of any type can ultimately be treated as an object.

Converting a value type to a reference type is called Boxing. Unboxing is an explicit operation. In this article, let us see would we really need to box a data type.

The type system unification provides value types with the benefits of object-ness and does so without introducing unnecessary overhead. For programs that don't need int values to act like objects, int values are simply 32-bit values. For programs that need ints to behave like objects, this functionality is available on-demand. This ability to treat value types as objects bridges the gap between value types and reference types that exists in most languages. All types in C# - value and reference inherit from the Object superclass. The object type is based on the System. Object in the .NET Framework.

Example

using System;
class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        Console.WriteLine(3.ToString());
    }
}

calls the object-defined ToString method on an integer literal.

Example

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        int i = 123;
        object o = i; // boxing
        int j = (int)o; // unboxing
    }
}

is more interesting. An int value can be converted to an object and back again to int. This example shows both boxing and unboxing.