What is the difference between a delegate instance and a method pointer?

Question

I thought that a delegate instance was interchangeable with a function instance.

Take the following code:

delegate int AddDelegate(int a, int b);

AddDel         


        

Answer 1

While delegates provide synonymous functionality in C# as function pointers in C or C++, there are significant differences. Key among these is that a delegate is a class, not a pointer.

In short, casting a delegate to a pointer isn't going to give you a reference to a function or method, and as such it can't be used to call a method by reference from unmanaged code.