In this post, we will understand the difference between delegates and events in C#.
It can be declared using the ‘delegate’ keyword.
It is a function pointer.
It holds the reference to one or more methods during runtime.
It is an independent keyword.
It doesn’t depend on events.
It contains the Combine() and Remove() methods that help add methods to the list of invocation.
It can be passed as a parameter to a method.
The ‘=’ operator can be used to assign a single method.
The ‘+=’ operator can be used to assign multiple methods to a delegate.
It can be declared using the ‘event’ keyword.
It can be defined as the notification mechanism that depends on delegates.
It depends on the delegate.
It can’t be created without delegates.
It can be understood as a wrapper around delegate instance.
This helps prevent users of the delegate from resetting the delegate and its list of invocation.
It allows to add or remove targets from list of invocation only.
The ‘EventInfo’ class inspects events and helps bind the event handlers.
These handles include methods such as AddEventHandler() and RemoveEventHandler(), that help add and remove methods to list of invocation respectively.
An event can be raised, but can’t be passed as a parameter to a method.
The ‘=’ operator can’t be used with events.
The ‘+=’ and ‘-=’ operators can be used with event that adds or remove event handlers respectively.
These methods would internally call methods like AddEventHandler and RemoveEventHandler.