The @ symbol

[knowthediff]

hello,

What does the "@" symbol do in the following line of code? I tried
searching the web but searching for "@ and c#" seems to be a waste of
time :)

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(di.FullName + @"\myxmlfile.xml");

Thanks,
-J

[Mattias Sjögren]

>FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(di.FullName + @"\myxmlfile.xml");

It makes it a verbatim string literal where \ isn't treated as an
escape character. It's equivalent to the regular string
"\\myxmlfile.xml".

You may also want to consider calling System.IO.Path.Combine instead
of doing straight string concatenation.
Mattias

--
Mattias Sjögren [C# MVP] mattias @ mvps.org
http://www.msjogren.net/dotnet/ | http://www.dotnetinterop.com
Please reply only to the newsgroup.

[Bruce Wood]

It indicates that the string should be taken as-is: the backslash in
this case is _not_ an escape character. It's meant to make writing
Windows / DOS pathnames easier. Rather than having to write this:

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(di.FullName + "\\myxmlfile.xml");

so that the \\ resolves into a single \, you can specify no escapes:

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(di.FullName + @"\myxmlfile.xml");

so here the compiler doesn't attempt to resolve "\m" into a special
character. This can be very handy if you're using UNC names:

string myPath = @"\\unix1\tiffs\product\4x4\M0356A.tif";

instead of (yuck):

string myPath = "\\\\unix1\\tiffs\\product\\4x4\\M0356A.tif";

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

<kn*********@gmail.com> wrote:

What does the "@" symbol do in the following line of code? I tried
searching the web but searching for "@ and c#" seems to be a waste of
time :)

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(di.FullName + @"\myxmlfile.xml");

See http://www.pobox.com/~skeet/csharp/s....html#literals

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too

[Brian Gideon]

In addition to what others have said it can also be used on identifiers
to allow language keywords as names. It's not something you see very
often though. For example, a VB.NET developer could decide that the
identifier "sealed" would be a good name for a property not knowing
that it is a keyword in C#. A C# developer using the VB.NET code would
need to qualify it with an @.

Brian

kn*********@gmail.com wrote:

hello,

What does the "@" symbol do in the following line of code? I tried
searching the web but searching for "@ and c#" seems to be a waste of
time :)

FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(di.FullName + @"\myxmlfile.xml");

Thanks,
-J

[knowthediff]

Thanks for the info :)

[knowthediff]

Thanks for the info :)

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

Brian Gideon <br*********@yahoo.com> wrote:

In addition to what others have said it can also be used on identifiers
to allow language keywords as names. It's not something you see very
often though. For example, a VB.NET developer could decide that the
identifier "sealed" would be a good name for a property not knowing
that it is a keyword in C#. A C# developer using the VB.NET code would
need to qualify it with an @.

Of course, anyone following the .NET naming conventions would
automatically avoid all C# keywords because all keywords in C# are in
lower-case, and all non-private members in the .NET naming conventions
are PascalCased :)

--
Jon Skeet - <sk***@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
If replying to the group, please do not mail me too