Expression Lambda versus Statement Lambda

Question

Fundamentally, is there any difference between a single-line expression lambda and a statement lambda? Take the following code, for example:

private delegate void MyDelegate();

protected static void Main()
{
    MyDelegate myDelegate1 = () => Console.WriteLine("Test 1");
    MyDelegate myDelegate2 = () => { Console.WriteLine("Test 2"); };

    myDelegate1();
    myDelegate2();

    Console.ReadKey();
}

While I prefer the first because I find the brackets to be ugly, is there anything different between the two (besides the obvious part about requiring brackets for multi-line statements)?

Answer 1

You need statement lambda for multistatement lambdas. In addition statement lambdas are not supported by expression providers like LINQ to SQL. Before .NET 4.0 the .NET Framework did not have support for statement expression trees. This was added in 4.0 but as far as I know no provider uses it.

Action myDelegate1 = () => Console.WriteLine("Test 1");
Expression<Action> myExpression = () => { Console.WriteLine("Test 2") }; //compile error unless you remove the { }
myDelegate1();
Action myDelegate2 = myExpression.Compile();
myDelegate2();

Otherwise they are the same.