 <p>It sounds like you are trying to write some error handling code. The compiler does do a great job of watching for inappropriate casts, but if you're looking for a runtime exception:</p> <pre><code>short y = short.Parse("56789"); </code></pre> <p>This will throw an <code>OverflowException</code>.</p> <blockquote> <p>OverflowException: Value was either too large or too small for an Int16.</p> </blockquote>