Difference between Casting, Parsing and Converting [duplicate]

Question

I have been working on some code for a while. And I had a question: What's the difference among casting, parsing and converting? And when we can use them?

Answer 1

Casting is when you take a variable of one type and change it to a different type. You can only do that in some cases, like so:

string str = "Hello";
object o = str;
string str2 = (string)o;  // <-- This is casting

Casting does not change the variable's value - the value remains of the same type (the string "Hello").

Converting is when you take a value from one type and convert it to a different type:

 double d = 5.5;
 int i = (int)d;    // <---- d was converted to an integer

Note that in this case, the conversion was done in the form of casting.

Parsing is taking a string and converting it to a different type by understanding its content. For instance, converting the string "123" to the number 123, or the string "Saturday, September 22nd" to a DateTime.