Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2010 Unleashed

Write Simple, Unnamed Functions Within Your Code

The latest versions of the .NET languages (2008 and later) enable you to write simple functions that might or might not be named, execute in-line, and return a single value. These functions exist inside your methods and not as separate, stand-alone functions. These functions are called lambda expressions. It’s useful to understand lambda expressions because they are used behind the scenes in LINQ queries. However, they are also valid outside of LINQ.

Let’s take a look at an example. Suppose you want to create a simple function that converts a temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. You could do so within your Visual Basic code by first using the keyword Function. Next, you can indicate parameters ...