In this post, we will understand the difference between delegates and events in C#.

Delegate

• 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.

Event

• 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.