Does Convert.ChangeType() makes sense with a string value?

Question

I found this great post by @hugoware about parsing values: http://hugoware.net/blog/more-control-when-parsing-values. I re-used his code sample in a project but now I noticed in the last block (line 154 of his code) he uses the Convert.ChangeType() method as a last attempt to "convert" the value.

Now I wonder if this makes sense, since we're always starting from a string value and I guess Convert.ChangeType only does casting on value types? Does it make sense to try that or will it always fail?

Answer 1

If you just want to convert strings, I advice you to use ConvertToString / ConvertFromString

 TypeConverter converter = TypeDescriptor.GetConverter(type);
 string res = converter.ConvertToString(obj);
 object original = converter.ConvertFromString(res);

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