VB vs C#: Why is this possible?

Question

Here is some code that troubles me every time I think about it.

Option Strict On  Module Module1      Sub Main()         For Each i As Integer In New String() {"why", "is", "this", "tolerated?"}             ' compiles just fine.         Next     End Sub  End Module 

C# simply will not allow converting strings to integers implicitly.

class Program {     static void Main(string[] args) {         foreach (int i in new string[] {"that's", "better"}) {             // will not compile, and for good reason.         }     } } 

Why does VB let us do that? I'm trying to have fun with this because I'm still relatively new here, but I'm also genuinely curious. I'm sure there are devs out there with the answer.

Answer 1

It appears to be a idiosyncrasy of the For Each Statement. According to the documentation it is evaluated at Runtime.

From Link:

When Option Strict is set to On, narrowing conversions ordinarily cause compiler errors. In a For Each statement, however, conversions from the elements in group to element are evaluated and performed at run time, and compiler errors caused by narrowing conversions are suppressed.

In the following example, the assignment of m as the initial value for n doesn't compile when Option Strict is on because the conversion of a Long to an Integer is a narrowing conversion. In the For Each statement, however, no compiler error is reported, even though the assignment to number requires the same conversion from Long to Integer. In the For Each statement that contains a large number, a run-time error occurs when ToInteger is applied to the large number.