What does the @ prefix do on string literals in C#

Question

I read some C# article to combine a path using Path.Combine(part1,part2).

It uses the following:

string part1 = @"c:\temp"; string part2 = @"assembly.txt"; 

May I know what is the use of @ in part1 and part2?

Answer 1

@ is not related to any method.

It means that you don't need to escape special characters in the string following to the symbol:

@"c:\temp" 

is equal to

"c:\\temp" 

Such string is called 'verbatim' or @-quoted. See MSDN.

Answer 2

As other have said its one way so that you don't need to escape special characters and very useful in specifying file paths.

string s1 =@"C:\MyFolder\Blue.jpg"; 

One more usage is when you have large strings and want it to be displayed across multiple lines rather than a long one.

string s2 =@"This could be very large string something like a Select query which you would want to be shown spanning across multiple lines  rather than scrolling to the right and see what it all reads up";