Delegate in c#

C# delegates are similar to pointers to functions, in C or C++. A delegate is a reference type variable that holds the reference to a method. The reference can be changed at runtime.

Delegates are especially used for implementing events and the call-back methods. All delegates are implicitly derived from the System.Delegateclass.

Declaring Delegates

Delegate declaration determines the methods that can be referenced by the delegate. A delegate can refer to a method, which has the same signature as that of the delegate.

For example, consider a delegate −

public delegate int MyDelegate (string s);

The preceding delegate can be used to reference any method that has a single string parameter and returns an int type variable.

Syntax for delegate declaration is −

delegate <return type> <delegate-name> <parameter list>

using System;

delegate int NumberChanger(int n);
namespace DelegateAppl {
   
   class TestDelegate {
      static int num = 10;
      
      public static int AddNum(int p) {
         num += p;
         return num;
      }
      public static int MultNum(int q) {
         num *= q;
         return num;
      }
      public static int getNum() {
         return num;
      }
      static void Main(string[] args) {
         //create delegate instances
         NumberChanger nc1 = new NumberChanger(AddNum);
         NumberChanger nc2 = new NumberChanger(MultNum);
         
         //calling the methods using the delegate objects
         nc1(25);
         Console.WriteLine("Value of Num: {0}", getNum());
         nc2(5);
         Console.WriteLine("Value of Num: {0}", getNum());
         Console.ReadKey();
      }
   }
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result −

Value of Num: 35
Value of Num: 175