Problem with delegates in C#

Question

In the following program, DummyMethod always print 5. But if we use the commented code instead, we get different values (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4). Can anybody please explain why this is

Answer 1

The problem is that you're capturing the same variable i in every delegate - which by the end of the loop just has the value 5.

Instead, you want each delegate to capture a different variable, which means declaring a new variable in the loop:

for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i)
{
    int localCopy = i;
    methods.Add(delegate(object obj) { return DummyMethod(localCopy); });
}

This is a pretty common "gotcha" - you can read a bit more about captured variables and closures in my closures article.