purpose of the @ character in C#

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Hello,

I've been experimenting with C# for some time now, and I keep seeing the @ character and can not find what it does exactly.
I saw it beeing used in file paths, and today I saw it somewhere else and could not figure the purpose.

Can someone explain what the exact meaning/purpose/use of the @ character is?

Code snippets where I saw it used:

C#

string SoftwareKey = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";

C#

if (printerName.Equals(@"hp deskjet 930c"))

C#

private string sbfFilePath = Application.StartupPath + @"\lukas.sbf";

Posted 10-Sep-12 21:15pm

pieterjann

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pradiprenushe · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-10T21:29:00

In all above cases @ is used to allow escape character.
If you write this

C#

string SoftwareKey = "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";

It will give you syntax error.
So you can use this

C#

string SoftwareKey = "SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall";

This is difficult way so instead

C#

string SoftwareKey = @"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall";

Now overall use of @
You can use reserverd keyword
1.

C#

string for;

is not allowed but below code is allowed

C#

string @for;

2.To allow escape character as above example.

3.To use multiline text

C#

Label1.Text="First line \n Second Line ";

Insted of this use this

C#

Label1.Text= @"First line
                 Second Line ";

So here @ sign take line how it is written.

OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-10T21:27:00

The '@' character before a string turns off character escaping. Without it, any character following a '\' character is interpreted as a special code:

\n   Newline
\t   Tab
\\   A single '\' character
\"   A single '"' character

and so on.

So

C#

string s = "\\\"\\\"";

would give you a string containing:

A backslash
A doublequote
A backslash
A doublequote

Prefixing it with '@' turns that off:

C#

string s = @"\""\";

Will give you the same result, which makes paths, regexes and so forth a lot more readable:

@"D:\Temp\MyFile.txt"

As opposed to

"D:\\Temp\\MyFile.text"

If you turn off escaping, to enter a double quote, you enter two of them together:

C#

string s = "hello ""Paul"" - this is a string"

purpose of the @ character in C#

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