Why does 'unbox.any' not provide a helpful exception text the way 'castclass' does?

Question

To illustrate my question, consider these trivial examples (C#):

object reference = new StringBuilder();
object box = 42;
object unset = null;

// CASE ONE: bad          


        

Answer 1

TL;DR;

I think that the runtime have all information needed to improve the message. Maybe some JIT developer could help, because it is needless to say that the JIT code is very sensitive and some times decisions are taken because of performance or security reasons, that are very difficult to an outsider to understand.

Detailed Explanation

To simplify the problem I changed the method to:

C#

void StringBuilderCast()
{
    object sbuilder = new StringBuilder();
    string s = (string)sbuilder;
}

IL

.method private hidebysig 
    instance void StringBuilderCast() cil managed 
{
    // Method begins at RVA 0x214c
    // Code size 15 (0xf)
    .maxstack 1
    .locals init (
        [0] object sbuilder,
        [1] string s
    )

    IL_0000: nop
    IL_0001: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder::.ctor()
    IL_0006: stloc.0
    IL_0007: ldloc.0
    IL_0008: castclass [mscorlib]System.String
    IL_000d: stloc.1
    IL_000e: ret
} // end of method Program::StringBuilderCast

The important opcodes here are:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/system.reflection.emit.opcodes.newobj.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/system.reflection.emit.opcodes.castclass.aspx

And the general memory layout is:

Thread Stack                        Heap
+---------------+          +---+---+----------+
| some variable |    +---->| L | T |   DATA   |
+---------------+    |     +---+---+----------+
|   sbuilder2   |----+
+---------------+

T = Instance Type  
L = Instance Lock  
Data = Instance Data

So in this case the runtime knows that it has a pointer to a StringBuilder and it should cast it to a string. In this situation it has all the information needed to give you the best exception as possible.

If we see at the JIT https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/32f0f9721afb584b4a14d69135bea7ddc129f755/src/vm/interpreter.cpp#L6137 we will se something like that

CORINFO_CLASS_HANDLE cls = GetTypeFromToken(m_ILCodePtr + 1, CORINFO_TOKENKIND_Casting  InterpTracingArg(RTK_CastClass));
Object * pObj = OpStackGet<Object*>(idx);
ObjIsInstanceOf(pObj, TypeHandle(cls), TRUE)) //ObjIsInstanceOf will throw if cast can't be done

if we dig into this method

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/32f0f9721afb584b4a14d69135bea7ddc129f755/src/vm/eedbginterfaceimpl.cpp#L1633

and the important part would be:

BOOL fCast = FALSE;
TypeHandle fromTypeHnd = obj->GetTypeHandle();
 if (fromTypeHnd.CanCastTo(toTypeHnd))
    {
        fCast = TRUE;
    }
if (Nullable::IsNullableForType(toTypeHnd, obj->GetMethodTable()))
    {
        // allow an object of type T to be cast to Nullable<T> (they have the same representation)
        fCast = TRUE;
    }
    // If type implements ICastable interface we give it a chance to tell us if it can be casted 
    // to a given type.
    else if (toTypeHnd.IsInterface() && fromTypeHnd.GetMethodTable()->IsICastable())
    {
    ...
    }
 if (!fCast && throwCastException) 
    {
        COMPlusThrowInvalidCastException(&obj, toTypeHnd);
    } 

The important part here is the method that throws the exception. As you can see it receives both the current object and the type that you trying to cast to.

At the end, the Throw method calls this method:

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/32f0f9721afb584b4a14d69135bea7ddc129f755/src/vm/excep.cpp#L13997

COMPlusThrow(kInvalidCastException, IDS_EE_CANNOTCAST, strCastFromName.GetUnicode(), strCastToName.GetUnicode());

Wich gives you the nice exception message with the type names.

But when you are casting a object to a value type

C#

void StringBuilderToLong()
{
    object sbuilder = new StringBuilder();
    long s = (long)sbuilder;
}

IL

.method private hidebysig 
    instance void StringBuilderToLong () cil managed 
{
    // Method begins at RVA 0x2168
    // Code size 15 (0xf)
    .maxstack 1
    .locals init (
        [0] object sbuilder,
        [1] int64 s
    )

    IL_0000: nop
    IL_0001: newobj instance void [mscorlib]System.Text.StringBuilder::.ctor()
    IL_0006: stloc.0
    IL_0007: ldloc.0
    IL_0008: unbox.any [mscorlib]System.Int64
    IL_000d: stloc.1
    IL_000e: ret
}

the important opcode here is:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/system.reflection.emit.opcodes.unbox_any.aspx

and we can see the UnboxAny behavior here https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/blob/32f0f9721afb584b4a14d69135bea7ddc129f755/src/vm/interpreter.cpp#L8766

//GET THE BOXED VALUE FROM THE STACK
Object* obj = OpStackGet<Object*>(tos);

//GET THE TARGET TYPE METADATA
unsigned boxTypeTok = getU4LittleEndian(m_ILCodePtr + 1);
boxTypeClsHnd = boxTypeResolvedTok.hClass;
boxTypeAttribs = m_interpCeeInfo.getClassAttribs(boxTypeClsHnd);

//IF THE TARGET TYPE IS A REFERENCE TYPE
//NOTHING CHANGE FROM ABOVE
if ((boxTypeAttribs & CORINFO_FLG_VALUECLASS) == 0)
{
    !ObjIsInstanceOf(obj, TypeHandle(boxTypeClsHnd), TRUE)
}
//ELSE THE TARGET TYPE IS A REFERENCE TYPE
else
{
    unboxHelper = m_interpCeeInfo.getUnBoxHelper(boxTypeClsHnd);
    switch (unboxHelper)
        {
        case CORINFO_HELP_UNBOX:
                MethodTable* pMT1 = (MethodTable*)boxTypeClsHnd;
                MethodTable* pMT2 = obj->GetMethodTable();

                if (pMT1->IsEquivalentTo(pMT2))
                {
                    res = OpStackGet<Object*>(tos)->UnBox();
                }
                else
                {
                    CorElementType type1 = pMT1->GetInternalCorElementType();
                    CorElementType type2 = pMT2->GetInternalCorElementType();

                    // we allow enums and their primtive type to be interchangable
                    if (type1 == type2)
                    {
                          res = OpStackGet<Object*>(tos)->UnBox();
                    }
                }

        //THE RUNTIME DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO UNBOX THIS ITEM
                if (res == NULL)
                {
                    COMPlusThrow(kInvalidCastException);

                    //I INSERTED THIS COMMENTS
            //auto thCastFrom = obj->GetTypeHandle();
            //auto thCastTo = TypeHandle(boxTypeClsHnd);
            //RealCOMPlusThrowInvalidCastException(thCastFrom, thCastTo);
                }
                break;
        case CORINFO_HELP_UNBOX_NULLABLE:
                InterpreterType it = InterpreterType(&m_interpCeeInfo, boxTypeClsHnd);
                size_t sz = it.Size(&m_interpCeeInfo);
                if (sz > sizeof(INT64))
                {
                    void* destPtr = LargeStructOperandStackPush(sz);
                    if (!Nullable::UnBox(destPtr, ObjectToOBJECTREF(obj), (MethodTable*)boxTypeClsHnd))
                    {
                        COMPlusThrow(kInvalidCastException);
                    //I INSERTED THIS COMMENTS
            //auto thCastFrom = obj->GetTypeHandle();
            //auto thCastTo = TypeHandle(boxTypeClsHnd);
            //RealCOMPlusThrowInvalidCastException(thCastFrom, thCastTo);
                    }
                }
                else
                {
                    INT64 dest = 0;
                    if (!Nullable::UnBox(&dest, ObjectToOBJECTREF(obj), (MethodTable*)boxTypeClsHnd))
                    {
                        COMPlusThrow(kInvalidCastException);
                    //I INSERTED THIS COMMENTS
            //auto thCastFrom = obj->GetTypeHandle();
            //auto thCastTo = TypeHandle(boxTypeClsHnd);
            //RealCOMPlusThrowInvalidCastException(thCastFrom, thCastTo);
                    }
                }
            }
            break;
        }
}

Well... at least, it seems possible to give a better exception message. If you remember when the exception had a nice message the call was:

COMPlusThrow(kInvalidCastException, IDS_EE_CANNOTCAST, strCastFromName.GetUnicode(), strCastToName.GetUnicode());

and the less inforative message it was:

COMPlusThrow(kInvalidCastException);

So I think that it is possible to improve the message doing

auto thCastFrom = obj->GetTypeHandle();
auto thCastTo = TypeHandle(boxTypeClsHnd);
RealCOMPlusThrowInvalidCastException(thCastFrom, thCastTo);

I have created the following issue on the coreclr github to see what is Microsoft developers opinions.

https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr/issues/7655