Any reason for this call to Activator.CreateInstance?

Question

I'm maintaining someone else's code and they have this section in a method:

object ReportCriteriaInstance =
        Activator.CreateInstance(
                typeof(MyCompany.Utils.ReportStructure.ReportSearchCriteria));

//ReportCriteria is passed in as a method parameter
ReportCriteriaInstance = ReportCriteria; 

I don't know why they're setting ReportCriteriaInstace to a different value one line after instantiating it with CreateInstance().

Aside from that, because we're passing in a known type to CreateInstance (MyCompany.Utils.ReportStructure.ReportSearchCriteria) is there any reason not to use new() instead? Some default, parameterless constructor reason I'm not getting maybe?

Answer 1

This seems like an abandoned effort to implement poor man's DI container. Later on the object was just passed in, so the code can be safely removed (unless there is a default ReportSearchCriteria constructor that has some potential side effects).

Answer 2

You can easily convert code to the following, avoiding side effects of the refactorings entirely:

var ReportSearchCriteriaInstance = new MyCompany.Utils.ReportStructure.ReportSearchCriteria();
object ReportCriteriaInstance = ReportCriteria;