Anonymous methods in c#

Basically anonymous methods are methods without a name, but only the body. These methods are useful when you want to declare a method that is doing simple work. It came with C# 2.0 as a solution to declare a _delegate_ without the need of a separate named method. The syntax for such a declaration is as follows.

public class Program

    {

        public delegate void DelegateType();

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            DelegateType DelegateObject = delegate()

            {

                Console.WriteLine("AnonymousMethod is invoked");

            };

            DelegateObject();

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }

Note that you can write anonymous methods of any return type and parameters.

public class Program

    {

        public delegate int DelegateType(int x);

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            DelegateType DelegateObject = delegate(int x)

            {

                return x;

            };

            int result = DelegateObject(5);

            Console.WriteLine("Result is : {0}", result);

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }

Though we define an anonymous method one time we can reuse it because we are wrapping it in a delegate.

Anonymous methods can be useful in a situation when we find a named method is an unnecessary overhead. A good example would be when you start a new thread. Look at the following example.

public class Program

    {

        public delegate void DelegateType();

        static void Main(string[] args)

        {

            System.Threading.Thread thread = new System.Threading.Thread

              (delegate()

              {

                  System.Console.Write("This Thread is performing work");

              });

            thread.Start();

            Console.ReadKey();

        }

    }