Variable Return Type of a Method in C#

c#, multiple-variable-return

Solution

How can i return a variable type from a method? I don't want to return an object type and then cast it to another type.

Well that's basically what you do have to do. Alternatively, if you're using C# 4 you could make the return type `dynamic`, which will allow the conversion to be implicit:

dynamic VariableReturnExampleMethod(int a)
{
    // Body as per question
}

...

// Fine...
int x = VariableReturnExampleMethod(2);

// This will throw an exception at execution time
int y = VariableReturnExampleMethod(1);

Fundamentally, you specify types to let the compiler know what to expect. How can that work if the type is only known at execution time? The reason the `dynamic` version works is that it basically tells the compiler to defer its normal work until execution time - so you lose the normal safety which would let the second example fail at compile time.

Problem

I want to give a parameter to a method and i want my method to return data by looking the parameter. Data can be in type of boolean, string, int or etc. How can i return a variable type from a method? I don't want to return an object type and then cast it to another type. For example: ``` BlaBla VariableReturnExampleMethod(int a) { if (a == 1) return "Demo"; else if (a == 2) return 2; else if (a == 3) return True; else return null; } ``` The reason why i want that is i have a method that reads a selected column of a row from the database. Types of columns are not same but i have to return every column's information.

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