What is a delegate in .NET?

A delegate in .NET is similar to a function pointer in C or C++. Using a delegate allows the programmer to encapsulate a reference to a method inside a delegate object. The delegate object can then be passed to code which can call the referenced method, without having to know at compile time which method will be invoked. In addition, we could use delegate to create custom event within a class. For example,

public delegate void FooDelegate();

class FooClass
{
// custom event
public event FooDelegate FooEvent;
}

FooClass FooObj = new FooClass()
FooObj.FooEvent += new FooDelegate();