How Can I Reliably Test for Generic Types in C# at Runtime?

Testing Generic Type Inference in C# with Type Reflection

In C#, assigning a value to a generic type variable requires type inference at compile time to determine the actual type of the value. This can lead to confusion when trying to test if an object is of a generic type at runtime.

One common approach, as seen in the original code, is to compare the type of the object to the generic type definition. However, this does not work for generic instances with specific type arguments.

To correctly test if an object is an instance of a generic type, you can use the IsGenericType property of System.Type:

bool isGeneric = list.GetType().IsGenericType;

This will return true if the object is an instance of a generic type, regardless of the type arguments.

If you specifically need to test if the object is an instance of a generic List<T> type, you can use the GetGenericTypeDefinition method to compare the object's type definition to the definition of List<T>:

bool isList = list.GetType().GetGenericTypeDefinition() == typeof(List<>);

This will return true if the object is an instance of List<T> with any type argument.

Note that both approaches check for exact type equivalence. If the object is derived from a generic type, these tests will return false.

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