C Sharp Generic delegates Func, Action and Predicate with anonymous method

In .net 3.5 some new generic delegates -Func<T>, Action<T> and Predicate<T> were introduced. Using generic delegates, it is possible to concise delegate type means you don’t have to define the delegate statement. These delegates are the Func<T>, Action<T> and Predicate<T> delegates and defined in the System namespace.

Action<T> performs an operation on the generic arguments. Func<T> performs an operationon the argument(s) and returns a value, and Predicate<T> is used to represent a set of criteria and determine if the argument matches the criteria.

 delegate TResult Func  ();
delegate TResult Func  (T arg);
delegate TResult Func  (T1 arg1, T2 arg2);
... up to T16
 delegate void Action ();
delegate void Action  (T arg);
delegate void Action  (T1 arg1, T2 arg2);
... up to T16 

Here "in" shows the input parameters and "out" shows the return value by the delegate.

Generic delegate example

 using System;
class demo 
{ 
delegate void MyDelegate(string str); 
static void Main(string[] args) 
{ 
MyDelegate d = show; 
d("Hello World!"); 
Console.ReadLine();
 }
static void show(string str) 
{ 
Console.WriteLine(str); 
} 
} 

Above code can be written as using generic delegate.

 using System;
class demo 
{ 
static void Main(string[] args) 
{ 
Action<string> d = show;
d("Hello World!"); 
Console.ReadLine(); 
}
static void show(string str)
{ 
Console.WriteLine(str); 
} 
} 

Generic delegate using anonymous method

 using System;
class demo 
{ 
static void Main(string[] args) 
{ 
Action<string> d = s => Console.WriteLine(s); 
d("Hello World!"); 
}
} 

Summary

In this article I try to explain the generic delegates with example. I hope after reading this article you will be able to understand the use of generic delegates. I would like to have feedback from my blog readers. Please post your feedback, question, or comments about this article.

Further Reading