From Java to C#: A Developer's Guide

16.2. Retrieving the type from a name of a class

If you want to retrieve the Type of a class represented by a string instead, you can use the static GetType() method of the Type class. Examine the following code.

 1: using System;
 2: using System.Reflection;
 3:
 4: public class MyClass {
 5: }
 6:
 7: public class MainClass {
 8:   public static void Main () {
 9:     Type t = Type.GetType("MyClass");
10:     Console.WriteLine(t);
11:   }
12: }

You can try this to retrieve the Type representation of an int:

Type t = Type.GetType("System.Int32");

It is illegal to do the following though:

Type t = Type.GetType("int");

because int is just a C# alias for System.Int32. Type.GetType only takes in strings representing types of the CTS.

Alternatively, you can use ...