C# Lambda expressions: Why should I use them?

Question

I have quickly read over the Microsoft Lambda Expression documentation.

This kind of example has helped me to understand better, though:

delegate in         


        

Answer 1

This is just one way of using a lambda expression. You can use a lambda expression anywhere you can use a delegate. This allows you to do things like this:

List strings = new List();
strings.Add("Good");
strings.Add("Morning")
strings.Add("Starshine");
strings.Add("The");
strings.Add("Earth");
strings.Add("says");
strings.Add("hello");

strings.Find(s => s == "hello");

This code will search the list for an entry that matches the word "hello". The other way to do this is to actually pass a delegate to the Find method, like this:

List strings = new List();
strings.Add("Good");
strings.Add("Morning")
strings.Add("Starshine");
strings.Add("The");
strings.Add("Earth");
strings.Add("says");
strings.Add("hello");

private static bool FindHello(String s)
{
    return s == "hello";
}

strings.Find(FindHello);

EDIT:

In C# 2.0, this could be done using the anonymous delegate syntax:

  strings.Find(delegate(String s) { return s == "hello"; });

Lambda's significantly cleaned up that syntax.