If an identity conversion exists from S to T, must it be that S and T are same type?

Question

In 6.1.6. of the C# language specification, there is:

The implicit reference conversions are:

(...)
From any reference-type to a referen

Answer 1

If an identity conversion exists from S to T, must it be that S and T are same type?

The oddity you've discovered in the spec arose as a result of adding dynamic to the language in C# 4.0. At runtime there is no such thing as dynamic; rather, dynamic is just a type that means "I'm really object; please defer analysis of this portion of the program until runtime".

Therefore there is an identity conversion between, say, List<object> and List<dynamic>. From the C# compiler's perspective they are different types because myList[0].Frob() would give an error for the former but not the latter. But from the runtime's perspective they are identical. Therefore the C# language classifies the conversion from one to the other as an identity conversion. At compile time the types can be different for the purposes of the C# language, but from the runtime's perspective they will be identical.