Anonymous Method In C#

Introduction

 

Hey there, greetings to you! I hope you are doing well.

 

In accordance with today's topic, let's take a deep dive to understand Anonymous methods in C#.

 

It is called anonymous because it has no name. A method without any name, interesting...

 

Anonymous methods are usually used with delegates. You can learn about delegates in detail here.

 

We know that delegates are used to hold a reference of a method & an anonymous method is nothing but an inline executable block encapsulated within {Curley braces}.

 

Let's understand how to use an anonymous method step by step.

 

We need a delegate to hold a reference of an anonymous method

private delegate int AddNumbers(int x, int y);

Let's create a reference variable of this delegate and store the anonymous method's reference in it.

AddNumbers result = delegate(int x, int y)
            {
                return x + y;
            };

Calling an anonymous method with a reference variable

Console.WriteLine("Addition is: "+ result(10, 20));

We can also pass the anonymous method as a parameter to another method whose parameter type is a delegate.

 

We need a method that accepts delegate:

private static int MultiplyNumbers(AddNumbers addNumbers , int z)
        {
            return addNumbers(10, 20) * z;
        }

Now we need to assign an anonymous method while calling the MultiplyNumbers method:

int result = MultiplyNumbers(delegate (int x, int y)
          {
              Console.WriteLine("Addition is: " + (x + y));
              return x + y;
          }, 10);

Calling a method:

Console.WriteLine("Multiplication is: " + result);

Now let's check out the output:

 

 

The anonymous method with Lambda expressions:

AddNumbers result = ( x,  y) =>  x + y;
Console.WriteLine("Addition is: " + result);

If you want to see how an anonymous method is used in Func, Action or predicate with lambda, feel free to have a look at this article: Func, Action & Predicate in C#.

 

But there are few limitations as well.

• An anonymous method does not support goto, break, or continue.
• An anonymous method cannot access ref or out parameters

Conclusion

 

Anonymous methods are easy to implement & easy to understand.

 

This extends our way of using delegates.

 

It is declared inline, hence it saves us a line of code.

 

I hope you understood how to implement anonymous functions in C#.

 

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As always, Happy Coding!