In addition to being used to specify the order of operations in an expression, parentheses are used to specify casts (type conversions):
( type ) expr
A cast explicitly invokes the conversion operator from expr's type to type; the cast will fail if no such conversion operator is defined. To define a conversion operator, see explicit and implicit.
The following program casts a double to an int. The program won't compile without the cast.
using System; class Test { public static void Main() { double x = 1234.7; int a; a = (int)x; // cast double to int Console.WriteLine(a); } }
1234
C# Operators | CLR 7.6.10 Cast expressions | explicit