Direct casting vs 'as' operator?

Question

Consider the following code:

void Handler(object o, EventArgs e)
{
   // I swear o is a string
   string s = (string)o; // 1
   //-OR-
   string s = o as str         


        

Answer 1

When trying to get the string representation of anything (of any type) that could potentially be null, I prefer the below line of code. It's compact, it invokes ToString(), and it correctly handles nulls. If o is null, s will contain String.Empty.

String s = String.Concat(o);