What is the purpose of the @ Character?

[Mick Walker]

Hi All,

I have seen the '@' character used with strings on several occasions.
Comming from a vb background I am not sure what this actually does.

i.e:
string strScript = @'alert(document.forms[0]['Textbox1'].value);";

What is the purpose of the '@' character in this line, because as far as
I can tell it works fine with or without it?

 

[Guest]

Hi Mick

It removes the need to use double backslashes in literal strings

@"c:\documents and settings\my docs"

is the same as

"c:\\documents and settings\\my docs"

HTH

 

[Dom Guinness]

Hi All,

I have seen the '@' character used with strings on several occasions.
Comming from a vb background I am not sure what this actually does.

i.e:
string strScript = @'alert(document.forms[0]['Textbox1'].value);";

What is the purpose of the '@' character in this line, because as far as
I can tell it works fine with or without it?

It signifies a literal string...
The backslash \ is used for special characters \n = carriage return etc.
but putting the @ sign means that you can pass a literal path.

 

[Ebbe Kristensen]

What is the purpose of the '@' character in this line, because as far
as I can tell it works fine with or without it?

It makes the string literal because suppresses the escape character (\) as
in:

string Path1 = "C:\\Temp"; // Double backslash needed to get a single
backslash in the string

string path2 = @"C:\Temp";

This also means that you cannot use the quote character (") in strings
prepended with @.

Ebbe

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

It makes the string literal because suppresses the escape character (\) as
in:

<snip>

Just to get the terminology correct, it indicates a *verbatim* string
literal.

"Hello" is still a string literal - but @"Hello" is a verbatim string
literal.

To the OP: See http://pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/strings.html for this
and more info on strings, escape characters etc.

Jon

 

[Enkidu]

Hi All,

I have seen the '@' character used with strings on several occasions.
Comming from a vb background I am not sure what this actually does.

i.e:
string strScript = @'alert(document.forms[0]['Textbox1'].value);";

What is the purpose of the '@' character in this line, because as far as
I can tell it works fine with or without it?

I believe that the "'" after the "@" should be '"'. If you see what I
mean! As for what it *means* others have covered that.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Laser Lu]

Another use of @ symbol is to use referenced identifiers that happen to be
C# keywords.
e.g. you can declare a string variable with name '@string':
string @string = "string value"; // here put @ ahead of 'string' means it is
referenced as an identifier not the keyword

 

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Another use of @ symbol is to use referenced identifiers that happen to be
C# keywords.
e.g. you can declare a string variable with name '@string':
string @string = "string value"; // here put @ ahead of 'string' means it is
referenced as an identifier not the keyword

Indeed. Although if I ever see such code in a codebase I'm working on,
outside autogenerated code, I'll be having serious words with the
author

Jon

 

[Chris Shepherd]

Indeed. Although if I ever see such code in a codebase I'm working on,
outside autogenerated code, I'll be having serious words with the
author

I saw this line the other day, and it made my head hurt:

string @bool = "true";

I think it could do people a lot of favours to just suddenly remove that
particular use of @.

Chris.

 

[Guest]

"This also means that you cannot use the quote character (") in strings
prepended with @."

That's incorrect. You can use quotes within a verbatim literal string if
you delimit them with another quote.
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[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

I saw this line the other day, and it made my head hurt:

string @bool = "true";

I think it could do people a lot of favours to just suddenly remove that
particular use of @.

No, you've got to keep it, otherwise you can't use members/classes
written in other languages which are exposed but using an existing
keyword as their name.

Yes, it's something which should be avoided wherever possible - but
you need to be able to cope with it if it happens.

Jon