I believe the typeof(T) operator is resolved at compile-time. Thus when you speak of how long "typeof took" you are really only measuring the time spent to loop, increment and check loop variable, and perform the assignment. The MSDN documentation does make a distinction between types in general and the type objects that represent types (and which are, of course, themselves types). For example, the reference for the typeof() operator mentions: Used to obtain the System.Type object for a type. A typeof expression takes the following form: System.Type type = typeof(int); It's clear that the System.Type is the "metatype", the type that is created for us but describes a type we created. It also says to use GetType() to obtain the run-time type of an expression (although not the GetType overload discussed here, taking a string and finding a corresponding type in any loaded assembly in the appdomain!), and I take this as evidence in support of the "typeof() is resolved at compile-time" hypothesis. :)
