What does “@” mean in C# [duplicate]

Answer 1

Before string it allows different string formating rules. You can't use backslash to specify special symbols and "" (double quotes become quotes). I find this format very useful for regular expressions

Example

Console.WriteLine(@"\n""\/a"); // outputs \n"\/a 
Console.WriteLine("\\n\"\"\\/a"); // outputs \n"\/a

You might also seen @ symbol before variable. In such case it allows using special C# keywords as variables.

Example:

var @switch = 1;
var @if = "test";

Answer 2

Verbatim string literals start with @ and are also enclosed in double quotation marks. For example:

@"good morning"  // a string literal

Nicked from, have a look at the last few lines above the example for more information. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/362314fe.aspx

Answer 3

There are two types of string literals, regular and verbatim. The @ symbol makes it a verbatim string literal.

MSDN: String literals (C#)

Answer 4

Used for string literal. It marks the string within the quote (") marks as the value without applying any interpretation for symbols in that string.

Answer 5

In C and C++, string has some special characters called "escape characters". For example \, & and the " itself is an escape character!

In the very normal way, you to print a statement like:

Nancy Said Hello World! & smiled

you had to set your string like next

string str = "Nancy said Hello World! \& smiled.";

But people in Microsoft made a new cool feature in C# compiler so you can escape the headache of handling the escape characters by adding @ before any string, and the compiler will handle all the escape characters for you by himself. For the last example you can have this in C# like next:

string str = @"Nancy said Hello World! & smiled.";

Answer 6

It means there is no need to escape characters in such a string.

So if you want to write the path for c:\Windows, you can write it as

string path = "c:\\Windows";  // Note escaped '\'

OR

string path = @"c:\Windows";  // '\' need not be escaped