How to determine Generic Types in run-time

Yes, the alias form of the 'using' directive is the only way to give a type an alias in C# as we don't have C++'s typedef.

Also typeof(T) is the only way I know of to get the runtime type of a type parameter.

The compiler tends to get in the way in generic code and you may need to use an (officially sanctioned)  hack when assigning values to generic types. For example, whilst the compiler won't let you assign an Int32 value to a type T variable and won't allow you to cast it to type T either, you can get around this by casting it to Object first and then to type T. So, the following program compiles and runs fine:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using TestType = System.Double;

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        myClass mc = new myClass();     
        List list = mc.myfunc();
        Console.WriteLine(list[0]);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }
}

public class myClass
{

      public List myfunc()
      {
         List list = new List();

         if (typeof(T) == typeof(Int32))
         {

            list.Add((T)(object)2);

         }    

         if (typeof(T) == typeof(Double))
         {

            list.Add((T)(object)2.5);

         } 

         return list;
     }

}