Is there a difference between the ToString method and casting to string?

Question

object o;

Is there any difference between o.ToString() and (string) o ?

Answer 1

If you're after safe conversion from object to string just use:

string s = Convert.ToString(o);

Answer 2

object.ToString() will convert the object into a string. If object has null value then it will throw an exception because no null value has ToString() method.

Whereas (string)object is a unboxing process of reference type to value type. Here an object value is copying into new instance of string type. If that object is null, it will assign null value.