At or @ usage

[folderann]

I'm new to C#. What's the purpose of the @ ??? I can't find it
indexed in my few C# books. It seems to have something to do with
reading strings literally. That's just a guess. I notice if I place
it outside a path that is in quotes, I don't need the extra backslash.
For Example:

string stagger=@"c:\noteq.cmd";

is the same as

string stagger="c:\\noteq.cmd";

string stagger="c:\noteq.cmd";

without the @ gives an error.

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?=]

folderann wrote:

I'm new to C#. What's the purpose of the @ ??? I can't find it
indexed in my few C# books. It seems to have something to do with
reading strings literally. That's just a guess. I notice if I place
it outside a path that is in quotes, I don't need the extra backslash.
For Example:

string stagger=@"c:\noteq.cmd";

is the same as

string stagger="c:\\noteq.cmd";

string stagger="c:\noteq.cmd";

without the @ gives an error.

In this context @ means that \ is not escape character.

So you avoid writing the two backslashes to get one.

(you put a " in the text by doubling and you can have literal
newlines in the string also)

Arne

[Ken Foskey]

On Wed, 06 Aug 2008 22:42:05 -0400, folderann wrote:

I'm new to C#. What's the purpose of the @ ??? I can't find it indexed

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...90(VS.71).aspx

verbatim-string-literal:
@" verbatim -string-literal-charactersopt "

It removes the significance of the \ character, eg \n is a new line, \t
is a tab.

[Marc Gravell]

Just for completeness (from the post title, not the example given),
note that an @ prefix is also used (separately) to allow you to use an
otherwise reserved word (/keyword) as a regular name in C#. This is
usually only used when dealing with cross-language issues (different
languages have different keywords) - for example, you can refer to a
member/type/variable @default, when without the @ it would get
interpreted as a language keyword.

Marc

[cfps.Christian]

I use it to create long strings such as SQL queries.
Rather than concatenating the string together (at high cost) you can
use the @ to create a multi-line string.

string query = "SELECT * "
+ "FROM RandomTable";
or

string query = @"SELECT *
FROM RandomTable ";

[Jon Skeet [C# MVP]]

On Aug 7, 3:06*pm, "cfps.Christian" <[e-mail]:

I use it to create long strings such as SQL queries.
Rather than concatenating the string together (at high cost) you can
use the @ to create a multi-line string.

string query = "SELECT * "
* * *+ "FROM RandomTable";
or

string query = @"SELECT *
* * *FROM RandomTable ";

There is no execution time cost to doing this in the first form. So
long as the strings are constant, they are concatenated by the
compiler rather than at execution time.
Even if it were performed at execution time, the cost of concatenating
strings is going to be just noise compared with the cost of actually
executing the query and waiting for the results.

Now there's a reasonable argument that the second form is easier to
edit etc, and that's all fine - but the performance argument is a
nonstarter.

Jon

[folderann]

A belated thanks to all. It was very enlightening. I deduced that
the @ took care of the identification of the escape sequence, but I
didn't understand any of it's other uses.

Thanks to all again. I got wrapped up in an other problema and forgot
about this post.

On Thu, 7 Aug 2008 07:15:47 -0700 (PDT), "Jon Skeet [C# MVP]"
<sk***@pobox.comwrote:

>On Aug 7, 3:06Êpm, "cfps.Christian" <[e-mail]:

>I use it to create long strings such as SQL queries.
Rather than concatenating the string together (at high cost) you can
use the @ to create a multi-line string.

string query = "SELECT * "
Ê Ê Ê+ "FROM RandomTable";
or

string query = @"SELECT *
Ê Ê ÊFROM RandomTable ";

There is no execution time cost to doing this in the first form. So
long as the strings are constant, they are concatenated by the
compiler rather than at execution time.
Even if it were performed at execution time, the cost of concatenating
strings is going to be just noise compared with the cost of actually
executing the query and waiting for the results.

Now there's a reasonable argument that the second form is easier to
edit etc, and that's all fine - but the performance argument is a
nonstarter.

Jon