Programmatic equivalent of default(Type)

Question

I\'m using reflection to loop through a Type\'s properties and set certain types to their default. Now, I could do a switch on the type and set the defau

Answer 1

This is optimized Flem's solution:

using System.Collections.Concurrent;

namespace System
{
    public static class TypeExtension
    {
        //a thread-safe way to hold default instances created at run-time
        private static ConcurrentDictionary typeDefaults =
           new ConcurrentDictionary();

        public static object GetDefaultValue(this Type type)
        {
            return type.IsValueType
               ? typeDefaults.GetOrAdd(type, Activator.CreateInstance)
               : null;
        }
    }
}