What is a delegate explain with example.

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.Delegate class.

Refer to a method, which have the same signature as that of the delegate.

For example, consider a delegate:

public delegate int MyDelegate (string s);

Following example demonstrates declaration, instantiation and use of a delegate that can be used to reference methods that take an integer parameter and returns an integer value.

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();
      }
   }
}