C#, casting.

An assignment is happening (if A is a subclass of B). Or an exception is being thrown (if B is a subclass of A).

Assuming the former - that A is a subclass of B (and so the cast is valid), you're telling the compiler that 'although I just created an 'A', and so obj1 is really an 'A', when I use obj1, treat it as if it were a 'B'.

This is useful when 'B' declares behaviors and properties common to a family of classes, and when you want to be able to work with any member of that family regardless of what specific member of the family it actually is. As Al-Forooque says, what you're doing is polymorphism.

This is what we call Explicit cast operation taken place.

In case of operators, there are two types of cast :

1. Implicit
2. Explicit

You can assign a child class object to its base class as it is already defined with objects implicitly.

But using () lets you to override the normal assignment operation and try to cast it to another type. The cast will be possible only when the actual object is capable to cast to the object.

To know about casts, you can have a look into :
http://www.abhisheksur.com/2010/07/operator-overloading-with-implicit-and.htm[^]

:rose: