Undetermined type conversion in VB.NET 2008

Question

I figured this would be a quick google, but extensive searching hasnt yielded any results. Everything about type conversion seems to dance around this concept.

I want to get the type of variable "a", and make a new variable named "b" of that type. Otherwise I could have "a" as a type already declared and "b" simply as an Object, then try to cast "b" to the type of "a".

Dim a As Integer  
Dim b As Whatever a Is  

OR

TryCast(b, Whatever a Is)

I would also like to make the conversion using a variable representation of the type, but cant find info on how to do that either.

Sorta like:

Dim a As Integer  
Dim b As Object  
Dim t As Type  

t = a.GetType()

TryCast(b, t)

Realizing I'm completely misusing TryCast here, I'm mostly trying to get my goal across. I figured it would be an easy quick thing to do but I cant really find any specific info on it. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Someone posted the correct answer but then erased it so I'll repost:

    Dim a As Integer
    Dim b = Activator.CreateInstance(a.GetType())

b will be an Object from the IDE's perspective because reflection happens at runtime. But if you call GetType on b you'll get System.Int32.

I'm still curious as to why you'd ever want to do this though.