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What is a delegate in C#? What is the difference between Func, Action and Predicate? How do you write and use a lambda expression as a shorthand for a delegate? What is a delegate in C#, and how does it enable passing methods as values? What is a closure and what is a common pitfall? How do events differ from plain delegates? What is an event, and how does it differ from a plain public delegate field? What are multicast delegates, and in what order do their subscribed methods get invoked? How does variable capture (closures) work in a C# lambda expression, and what pitfall occurs when capturing a loop variable? What causes event-handler memory leaks and how do you prevent them?
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C# › Delegates, Events & Lambdas

What is a delegate in C#, and what does it represent conceptually?

Beginner

Answer

A delegate is a type-safe reference to a method with a specific signature — it lets you treat methods as values you can store in variables, pass as parameters, and invoke indirectly, similar to a function pointer but fully type-checked by the compiler.
public delegate int MathOperation(int a, int b);

int Add(int a, int b) => a + b;
MathOperation op = Add;
int result = op(3, 4); // 7, invoked through the delegate
Real-world example Passing a specific comparison or transformation method as an argument to a generic sorting or processing function.

Common follow-ups: How does a delegate differ from simply calling a method directly?

Interfaces & Abstract Classes
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