When Is it Better To Use @ Before a String?

Question

In code that declares or uses a string, I usually see the developers declare it like this:

string randomString = @"C:\Random\RandomFolder\ThisFile.xml";

Instead of:

string randomString = "C:\\Random\\RandomFolder\\ThisFile.xml";

That's the only thing that I see which is better to use the @ prefix, since you don't need to do \\, but is there any other use for it when it's better than just without it?

Answer 1

The @ sign indicates to the compiler that the string is a verbatim string literal, and thus does not require you to escape any of the characters. Not just the backslash, of course. No escape sequences of any kind are processed by the compiler.

Whether it's "better" or not is an extremely difficult question to answer. This is a purely stylistic choice. Some might argue that the string contents are more readable when you use a string literal, rather than having to escape all of the characters. Others might prefer consistency, where all strings that contain characters that would ordinarily require escaping would have to be escaped. This makes it easier to notice errors in code at a glance. (For what it's worth, I fall into the latter camp. All my paths have \\.)

That being said, it's extremely convenient for regular expressions, for which you'd otherwise be escaping all over the place. And since they don't look much like regular strings, there's minimal risk of confusion.