How to use reserved words as member names.

Disclaimer: I do not condone the use of this tip. I just find it interesting.

Today, I was using ReSharper to rename some constants in a class. The constants were named inch, pica, and point. I wanted to rename them to in, pc, and pt. Resharper caught the obvious error in my thinking which is that the name in is a reserved keyword in C# (duh).

What I found interesting is that ReSharper didn't go ahead and follow my instructions (thanks!) or tell me I was being dumb for trying to name something using the same name as the reserved word; it renamed it to @in.

Huh. A quick search revealed that yes indeed, any member can begin with the @ character. You learn something new every day. Therefore this code is valid:

public class @foo
{
    private string @baa = "sheep";

    private void @black()
    {
        Console.Write("Hello" + @sheep);
    }
}

I also noted that even Intellisense doesn't correctly colour-code when @ is used to prefix a class' name.

Follow-up: Apparently they are called verbatim identifiers. Thanks SubsonicDesignOfficial.