How to call the correct overloaded function at runtime?

Question

Hi All,

How do I call the correct overloaded function given a reference to an object based on the actual type of the object. For example...

class Test
{
 object o1 = new object();
 object o2 = new string("ABCD");
 MyToString(o1);
 MyToString(o2);//I want this to call the second overloaded function


 void MyToString(object o)
 {
  Console.WriteLine("MyToString(object) called.");
 }

 void MyToString(string str)
 {
  Console.WriteLine("MyToString(string) called.");
 }
}

what I mean is there a better option than the following?

if(typeof(o) == typeof(string))
{
 MyToString((string)o);
}
else
{
 MyToString(o);
}

May be this can be done using reflection?

Answer 1

Ok as soon as I hit post I remembered this can indeed be done using reflection...

var methInfo = typeof(Test).GetMethod("MyToString", new Type[] {o.GetType()});
methInfo.Invoke(this, new object[] {o});

Answer 2

Why not have a toString() function in the actual object itself? That way you can call myObj.toString() and the relative output is given. Then you don't have to do any comparisons.

Answer 3

You could just use ternary operators to code this using a single clean line of code:

MyToString(o is string ? (string)o : o);