Unsubscribe anonymous method in C#

Is it possible to unsubscribe an anonymous method from an event?

If I subscribe to an event like this:

void MyMethod()
{
    Console.WriteLine("I did it!");
}

MyEvent += MyMethod;

I can un-subscribe like this:

MyEvent -= MyMethod;

But if I subscribe using an anonymous method:

MyEvent += delegate(){Console.WriteLine("I did it!");};

is it possible to unsubscribe this anonymous method? If so, how?

Solution 1:

Action myDelegate = delegate(){Console.WriteLine("I did it!");};

MyEvent += myDelegate;


// .... later

MyEvent -= myDelegate;

Just keep a reference to the delegate around.

Solution 2:

One technique is to declare a variable to hold the anonymous method which would then be available inside the anonymous method itself. This worked for me because the desired behavior was to unsubscribe after the event was handled.

Example:

MyEventHandler foo = null;
foo = delegate(object s, MyEventArgs ev)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("I did it!");
        MyEvent -= foo;
    };
MyEvent += foo;

Solution 3:

From memory, the specification explicitly doesn't guarantee the behaviour either way when it comes to equivalence of delegates created with anonymous methods.

If you need to unsubscribe, you should either use a "normal" method or retain the delegate somewhere else so you can unsubscribe with exactly the same delegate you used to subscribe.

Solution 4:

Since C# 7.0 local functions feature has been released, the approach suggested by J c becomes really neat.

void foo(object s, MyEventArgs ev)
{
    Console.WriteLine("I did it!");
    MyEvent -= foo;
};
MyEvent += foo;

So, honestly, you do not have an anonymous function as a variable here. But I suppose the motivation to use it in your case can be applied to local functions.