Activator.CreateInstance returning object? instead of object.

[sjb-sjb]

According to the following post, Activator.CreateInstance should return object instead of object?. But in .NET 5 it is marked as returning object?.

Post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8691601/creating-a-nullable-object-via-activator-createinstance-returns-null

[svick]

I don't understand, that question complains that Activator.CreateInstance does return null in some cases (namely, for nullable value types). So I think object? is the correct return type.

[yaakov-h]

Yep, that seems correct to me. Using C# Interactive:

> Activator.CreateInstance<int?>()
null

[gfoidl]

Also see #674 for the same question.

[sjb-sjb]

When I read the accepted answer in the post that I referenced, I thought it meant that the fix got rid of the null return. But it seems that is not the case. I guess the point is that you cannot return an object referring to a Nullable<T> due to the boxing behavior of Nullable. I would have thought it would throw InvalidOperationException in this situation...

Thanks for the clarification.