Lambda Expressions

Abstract

Most of the new features of C# 3.0 open up a world of expressive functional programming to the C# programmer. Functional programming, in its pure form, is a programming methodology built on top of immutable variables (sometimes called symbols), functions that can produce other functions, and recursion, just to name a few of its foundations. Some prominent functional programming languages include Lisp, Haskell, F#,¹ and Scheme.² However, functional programming does not require a pure functional language and one can use and implement functional programming disciplines in traditionally imperative languages like the C-based languages (including C#). The new C# 3.0 features transform the language into a more expressive hybrid language where both imperative and functional programming techniques can be utilized in harmony. Lambda expressions are arguably the biggest piece of this functional programming pie.