VB vs C# — CType vs ChangeType

Question

Why does this work in VB.Net:

Dim ClipboardStream As New StreamReader(
    CType(ClipboardData.GetData(DataFormats.CommaSeparatedValue), Stream))

But this is throwing an error in C#:

Stream is a Type, which is not valid in the current context

ClipboardStream = new StreamReader(Convert.ChangeType(
    ClipboardData.GetData(DataFormats.CommaSeparatedValue), Stream));

To be honest, I'm not 100% clued up on converting types, I've only ever used them in code snippets and now I'm trying to convert a simple VB code snippet to a C# version...

Answer 1

ChangeType accepts a Type as the second parameter, so you should write typeof(Stream). typeof(Stream) evaluates to a Type instance representing the type Stream. Just using Stream there does not work because it does not evaluate to a value. It's not an expression.

Anyway, you shouldn't be using ChangeType here anyway, you should cast, which is the C# equivalent of CType:

 ClipboardStream = new StreamReader((Stream)ClipboardData.GetData(DataFormats.CommaSeparatedValue));