C# Tips & Tricks #26 – 3 uses of the @ Symbol

This blog post will explain 3 different use cases of the @ Symbol in C# and how the .NET developers can use them.

3 uses of the @ Symbol in C#

1. You can use one of the reserved words of c# with the this symbol

Eg :

string @int = "senthil kumar";

or something like this

string @class ="MCA";

Although you can use this , avoid using one.

2. Before a string specially when using the file paths .

You can use

string filepath = @"D:\SENTHIL-DATA\myprofile.txt";

instead of

string filepath = "D:\\SENTHIL-DATA\\myprofile.txt";

3. For a Multi lined text

string ThreeIdiots = @"Senthil Kumar,
Norton Stanley,
and Pavan Rao!";

MessageBox.Show(ThreeIdiots);

instead of

string ThreeIdiots = @"Senthil Kumar,\n   Norton Stanley,and Pavan Rao!";

You can run the above code snippets using the below Run Code Snippet button.

This is what the c# Language specification states about the @ Symbol

“The prefix “@” enables the use of keywords as identifiers, which is useful when interfacing with other programming languages. The character @ is not actually part of the identifier, so the identifier might be seen in other languages as a normal identifier, without the prefix. An identifier with an @ prefix is called a verbatim identifier. Use of the @ prefix for identifiers that are not keywords is permitted, but strongly discouraged as a matter of style.”

Interesting symbol isn’t it ??