Reflection models the accessibility rules of the common type system. For example, if the caller is in the same assembly, the caller does not need special permissions for internal members. Otherwise, the caller needs System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission. This is consistent with lookup of members that are protected, private, and so on.

The general principle is that ChangeType should perform only widening coercions, which never lose data. An example of a widening coercion is coercing a value that is a 32-bit signed integer to a value that is a 64-bit signed integer. This is distinguished from a narrowing coercion, which may lose data. An example of a narrowing coercion is coercing a 64-bit signed integer to a 32-bit signed integer.

The following table lists the coercions performed by the default ChangeType.

Any type	Its base type.
Any type	The interface it implements.
Char	UInt16, UInt32, Int32, UInt64, Int64, Single, Double
Byte	Char, UInt16, Int16, UInt32, Int32, UInt64, Int64, Single, Double
SByte	Int16, Int32, Int64, Single, Double
UInt16	UInt32, Int32, UInt64, Int64, Single, Double
Int16	Int32, Int64, Single, Double
UInt32	UInt64, Int64, Single, Double
Int32	Int64, Single, Double
UInt64	Single, Double
Int64	Single, Double
Single	Double
Non-reference	By-reference.

Namespace: System.Reflection
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)
Assembly Versions: 1.0.5000.0, 2.0.0.0, 4.0.0.0