@ sign?

[Ben R.]

I saw the following line of sourcecode:
string input = @"the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog";

What is the purpose of the '@' above? I tried running with and without and
get seemingly same results. Anyone know?

[Dan]

Re: @ sign?

That string will be the same with or without the '@'. The '@'
eliminates escape chars by telling the compiler that it is a verbatim
string. This makes writing stuff like file paths easier.

@"c:\stuff.t xt" represents just what it says, however "c:\stuff.t xt"
will give a compile error because it is trying to find a special char
related to \s.

MessageBox.Show ("Hello\nWorld" )
gives:

Hello
World

MessageBox.Show (@"Hello\nWorld ")
gives:

Hello\nWorld

I would not suggest using it when it is not needed.

HTH,
Dan

[L]

Re: @ sign?

@ is used when you want to assign a file path to a string.

ex:

string strFilePath = @"C:/MyDir/thisFile.txt"

if you are not using @, you got to assign it as

string strFilePath = "C://MyDir//thisFile.txt"

-Lalasa.

[Dan]

Re: @ sign?

This is true because "\\" is a special character interpreted as literal
"\".

Another very important use is when dealing with regex. You want regex
to interpret "\w" as a word character, not make the compiler puke
trying to figure out what it means. You don't want to write confusing
and ugly regex statements where all of the "\" characters are doubled.

HTH,
Dan

[MarkT [developmentor]]

RE: @ sign?

It also lets you embed a return in a string, for example:

string stuff = @"hello
there, how are
you?";

[Christian T.]

RE: @ sign?

That is a quoted string literal.

The advantage of @-quoting is that escape sequences are not processed,
which makes it easy to write, for example, a fully qualified file name:
@"c:\Docs\Sourc e\a.txt" // rather than "c:\\Docs\\Sour ce\\a.txt"
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...-us/csref/html
/vclrfString.asp )

The reason you don't see a difference in your example is because your
string does not have any escape sequences.

Cheers,
Christian T. [MSFT]
Visual Studio Update Team

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--------------------[color=blue]
>Thread-Topic: @ sign?
>thread-index: AcU2NQb+T1FGqU7 RREWhEgddymJE2Q ==
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>From: =?Utf-8?B?QmVuIFIu?= <BenR@discussio ns.microsoft.co m>
>Subject: @ sign?
>Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:03:02 -0800
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>
>I saw the following line of sourcecode:
>string input = @"the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog";
>
>What is the purpose of the '@' above? I tried running with and without and
>get seemingly same results. Anyone know?
>[/color]

[Ted Miller]

Re: @ sign?

It also allows you to use reserved words as variable names.

public void Foo(string @string)
{
// ...
}


"Dan" <danielshanyfel t@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1112303915 .100741.97460@z 14g2000cwz.goog legroups.com...[color=blue]
> That string will be the same with or without the '@'. The '@'
> eliminates escape chars by telling the compiler that it is a verbatim
> string. This makes writing stuff like file paths easier.
>
> @"c:\stuff.t xt" represents just what it says, however "c:\stuff.t xt"
> will give a compile error because it is trying to find a special char
> related to \s.
>
> MessageBox.Show ("Hello\nWorld" )
> gives:
>
> Hello
> World
>
> MessageBox.Show (@"Hello\nWorld ")
> gives:
>
> Hello\nWorld
>
> I would not suggest using it when it is not needed.
>
> HTH,
> Dan
>[/color]

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

RE: @ sign?

Christian T. (MSFT) <Christian_T.@o nline.microsoft .com> wrote:[color=blue]
> That is a quoted string literal.[/color]

Otherwise known as a verbatim string literal (e.g. by the C# spec :)

--
Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.co m>

http://www.pobox.com/~skeet

If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Ben R.]

RE: @ sign?

Thanks to everyone who responded to this question. Your answers were all very
clear and helpful. Cheers...

-Ben

"Ben R." wrote:
[color=blue]
> I saw the following line of sourcecode:
> string input = @"the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog";
>
> What is the purpose of the '@' above? I tried running with and without and
> get seemingly same results. Anyone know?[/color]