Is there a benefit to explicit use of "new EventHandler" declaration?

Question

In assigning event handlers to something like a context MenuItem, for instance, there are two acceptable syntaxes:

MenuItem item = new MenuItem("Open Image", btnOpenImage_Click);

...and...

MenuItem item = new MenuItem("Open Image", new EventHandler(btnOpenImage_Click));

I also note that the same appears to apply to this:

listView.ItemClick += listView_ItemClick;

...and...

listView.ItemClick += new ItemClickEventHandler(listView_ItemClick);

Is there any particular advantage for the second (explicit) over the first? Or is this more of a stylistic question?

Answer 1

In C# 1.0 you had no choice but to explicitly define the delegate type and the target.

Since C# 2.0 the compiler allows you to express yourself in a more succinct manner by means of an implicit conversion from a method group to a compatible delegate type. It's really just syntactic sugar.

Sometimes you have no choice but to use the long-winded syntax if the correct overload cannot be resolved from the method group due to an ambiguity.