Lambda表达式是表示匿名方法的一种简洁方式。匿名方法和Lambda表达式都允许您内联定义方法实现，但是，匿名方法显式地要求您定义方法的参数类型和返回类型。Lambda表达式使用c# 3.0的类型推断特性，该特性允许编译器根据上下文推断变量的类型。这是非常方便的，因为这节省了我们大量的输入!

匿名函数和表达式对于一次性方法非常有用，这些方法不需要从创建完整方法所需的额外工作中获益。

想想这个例子:

 List<string> people = new List<string> { "name1", "name2", "joe", "another name", "etc" };
 string person = people.Find(person => person.Contains("Joe"));

与

 public string FindPerson(string nameContains, List<string> persons)
 {
     foreach (string person in persons)
         if (person.Contains(nameContains))
             return person;
     return null;
 }

它们在功能上是等价的。

The biggest benefit of lambda expressions and anonymous functions is the fact that they allow the client (programmer) of a library/framework to inject functionality by means of code in the given library/framework ( as it is the LINQ, ASP.NET Core and many others ) in a way that the regular methods cannot. However, their strength is not obvious for a single application programmer but to the one that creates libraries that will be later used by others who will want to configure the behaviour of the library code or the one that uses libraries. So the context of effectively using a lambda expression is the usage/creation of a library/framework.

此外，由于它们描述的是一次性使用的代码，所以它们不必是类的成员，这样会导致代码更加复杂。想象一下，每当我们想要配置类对象的操作时，都必须声明一个焦点不明确的类。

这是一种将小操作放在非常接近使用位置的地方的方法(与在接近使用点的地方声明变量没有什么不同)。这将使您的代码更具可读性。通过匿名化表达式，如果在其他地方使用了该函数并对其进行了修改以“增强”它，那么其他人就很难破坏您的客户端代码。

同样，为什么需要使用foreach?你可以用一个简单的for循环来完成foreach中的所有事情，或者直接使用IEnumerable。答案:你不需要它，但它使你的代码更可读。

Microsoft has given us a cleaner, more convenient way of creating anonymous delegates called Lambda expressions. However, there is not a lot of attention being paid to the expressions portion of this statement. Microsoft released a entire namespace, System.Linq.Expressions, which contains classes to create expression trees based on lambda expressions. Expression trees are made up of objects that represent logic. For example, x = y + z is an expression that might be part of an expression tree in .Net. Consider the following (simple) example:

using System;
using System.Linq;
using System.Linq.Expressions;


namespace ExpressionTreeThingy
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Expression<Func<int, int>> expr = (x) => x + 1; //this is not a delegate, but an object
            var del = expr.Compile(); //compiles the object to a CLR delegate, at runtime
            Console.WriteLine(del(5)); //we are just invoking a delegate at this point
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

This example is trivial. And I am sure you are thinking, "This is useless as I could have directly created the delegate instead of creating an expression and compiling it at runtime". And you would be right. But this provides the foundation for expression trees. There are a number of expressions available in the Expressions namespaces, and you can build your own. I think you can see that this might be useful when you don't know exactly what the algorithm should be at design or compile time. I saw an example somewhere for using this to write a scientific calculator. You could also use it for Bayesian systems, or for genetic programming (AI). A few times in my career I have had to write Excel-like functionality that allowed users to enter simple expressions (addition, subtrations, etc) to operate on available data. In pre-.Net 3.5 I have had to resort to some scripting language external to C#, or had to use the code-emitting functionality in reflection to create .Net code on the fly. Now I would use expression trees.

这样可以避免在远离使用方法的地方定义只在特定位置使用一次的方法。好的用途是作为泛型算法(如排序)的比较器，然后您可以定义一个自定义排序函数，在该函数中调用排序，而不是进一步迫使您查看其他地方以查看您正在排序的对象。

这并不是真正的创新。LISP拥有lambda函数已经有30年或更长时间了。