How Can I Programmatically Get the Default Value of Any Type in C#?

Procedural equivalent to default(Type)

When using reflection to iterate over properties of a type and set certain types to their default values, you may want to take a cleaner approach than explicit type-based defaults. In this case, is there a programmatic equivalent to default(Type) that can be used for such scenarios?

Solution:

To achieve this, the following options are available:

1. Value type:

   • Generate a new instance using the Activator.CreateInstance method, which usually provides a default value for the value type.

2. Reference type:

   • Just return null since the reference type defaults to null.

Sample code:

The following code example illustrates how to obtain the default value programmatically:

<code class="language-csharp">public static object GetDefault(Type type)
{
    if (type.GetTypeInfo().IsValueType)
    {
        return Activator.CreateInstance(type);
    }
    return null;
}</code>

Note:

In newer .NET versions (e.g., .NET Standard), type.IsValueType is written as type.GetTypeInfo().IsValueType.

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