Explicit type casting in js

Question

Is there a generic way to explicitly cast a variable to a specific type? For example:

var b = true;
var str = "";
var n = 5;
cast(someVariable, typeof b);   //someVariable become a boolean
cast(someVariable, typeof str); //someVariable become a string
cast(someVariable, typeof n);   //someVariable become an integer

where a cast is supposed to be that magic casting method.

That's obvious that I can just enumerate in a switch all possible types. But is there a [beautiful] native way to do that?

Answer 1

You can do it using mapping:

var castMap  = {
    "boolean" : Boolean
};
var b = true;
var someVariable = "true";
castMap[typeof(b)](someVariable)