How can I get the primitive name of a type in C#?

Question

I'm using reflection to print out a method signature, e.g.

foreach (var pi in mi.GetParameters()) {     Console.WriteLine(pi.Name + ": " + pi.ParameterType.ToString()); } 

This works pretty well, but it prints out the type of primitives as "System.String" instead of "string" and "System.Nullable`1[System.Int32]" instead of "int?". Is there a way to get the name of the parameter as it looks in code, e.g.

public Example(string p1, int? p2) 

prints

p1: string p2: int? 

instead of

p1: System.String p2: System.Nullable`1[System.Int32] 

Answer 1

EDIT: I was half wrong in the answer below.

Have a look at CSharpCodeProvider.GetTypeOutput. Sample code:

using Microsoft.CSharp; using System; using System.CodeDom;  class Test {     static void Main()     {         var compiler = new CSharpCodeProvider();         // Just to prove a point...         var type = new CodeTypeReference(typeof(Int32));         Console.WriteLine(compiler.GetTypeOutput(type)); // Prints int     } } 

However, this doesn't translate Nullable<T> into T? - and I can't find any options which would make it do so, although that doesn't mean such an option doesn't exist :)

---

There's nothing in the framework to support this - after all, they're C#-specific names.

(Note that string isn't a primitive type, by the way.)

You'll have to do it by spotting Nullable`1 yourself (Nullable.GetUnderlyingType may be used for this, for example), and have a map from the full framework name to each alias.