What is "(GameObject)" in "(GameObject)Instantiate(...)" for?

Questions & Answers
1

I came across this line of code while doing Unity’s Multiplayer Networking tutorial:

var enemy = (GameObject)Instantiate(enemyPrefab, spawnPosition, spawnRotation);

What is the part “(GameObject)” called? Is there another way to write this same line of code?

2

Whenever you have a type name in parentheses like that, before a value, its called an Explicit Cast.

Casting an object is when you “convert it” - for lack of a better term - to a different type that it can be converted to.

You can cast ints to floats, you can cast all types to object, you can cas List to IList, etc:

int someInt = 10;
SomeClass someObject = new SomeClass("this is a parameter");
List<string> someListOfStrings = new List<string>();

float intAsFloat = (float)someInt;
object someClassAsObject = (object)someObject;
IList stringListAsIList = (IList)someListOfStrings;

intAsFloat == 10f : true
someClassAsObject == someObject : true
stringListAsIList == someListOfStrings : true