C# Delegates Background

Understanding Delegates in C#

As a programmer navigating the complex world of C#, you might have come across the term “delegates.” Delegates are a powerful feature in C# that enables you to treat methods as first-class citizens. In simpler terms, they allow you to store references to methods and pass them as parameters to other methods. Let’s dive deeper into this fascinating aspect of C#.

What Is a Delegate?

In C#, a delegate is a type that represents references to methods with specific parameters and a return type. Think of a delegate as a pointer to a method, but with added flexibility. Delegates play a crucial role in implementing callback methods, event handling, and asynchronous programming.

Here’s a straightforward example to illustrate the concept. Consider a scenario where you need to perform a specific action on a list of integers. You can define a delegate that represents a method capable of performing this action and then use it to execute the method on different sets of data.

public delegate void IntActionDelegate(int x, int y);

public class Calculator
{
    public void Add(int a, int b)
    {
      Console.WriteLine($"{a} + {b} = {a + b}");
    }

    public void Subtract(int a, int b)
    {
      Console.WriteLine($"{a} - {b} = {a - b}");
    }
}
class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
      Calculator calculator…