How do I safely cast a System.Object to a `bool` in C#?

Question

I am extracting a bool value from a (non-generic, heterogeneous) collection.

The as operator may only be used with reference types, so it is no

Answer 1

Providing you don't actually need to keep a reference to the rawValue, here's a one-liner using the GetValueOrDefault() method of the Nullable structure:

bool value = (map.GetValue(key) as bool?).GetValueOrDefault();

You can also specify a default value using the method overload GetValueOrDefault(T).