C#, cast variable to Enum.GetUnderlyingType

Question

Suppose I have enum, which underlying type is byte:

enum EmpType : byte
{
    Manager = 1,
    Worker = 2,
}

Can I cast some int literal to underlying type of this enum(byte in this case) ?

Something like this doesn't work (Error: "; expected"):

byte x = (Enum.GetUnderlyingType(typeof(EmpType)))15;

Can I cast to underlying type without explicitly writing (byte)15 ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I think the following will work. But I'm not sure it will get you the desired behavior in all cases.

var x = Convert.ChangeType(15, Enum.GetUnderlyingType(typeof(EmpType)))

Answer 2

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to do. Below is a related question about casting ints to enums and vice-versa, the same applies to byte in this case.

Is it possible to cast integer to enum?

If you want to detect the underlying type at run-time... it seems awkward and a lot of work. You could just do a case statement based upon the name of the underlying type. I'm not sure what good it would do you due to type safety concerns.