delegate and anonymous method

Question

hi guys

i have a question about anonymous method. i can understand the use of delegate since we can make call to number of named methods,which seems very useful but when delegate are use with anonymous method i can't understand its use since when an delegate is instantiated with a single anonymous method it has capabilities to cal that single method only, in such scenario why don't we create single named method and call it when needed in program .

one more thing i want to ask is i read at so many place that anonymous method can access variable in outer scope i don't find any special thing in it because even any function member of an class can access member field of that class which are in outer scope .can any one please explain me in what scenario delegate with anonymous method provide best way of solution.

Vulpes · Answer

Well the reason why anonymous methods (and lambda expressions which have largely superseded them) were introduced in the first place was to enable you to write a (usually) small amount of code - often a single line - and convert it to a delegate without the need to create a separate 'named' method first. This 'inline code' ability is convenient in such contexts as LINQ where you can usually write a complex query without the need to call 'external' methods at all. Anonymous methods also compensate to some extent for not being able to create nested methods (i.e. sub-methods) in C# which can be useful in complex methods which use the same piece of code more than once. To provide equivalent functionality to named methods or nested methods anonymous methods can take parameters capture 'outer' variables and are not executed until they actually need to be.