.net - What's the @ in front of a string in C#?

Question

This is a .NET question for C# (or possibly VB.net), but I am trying to figure out what's the difference between the following declarations:

string hello = "hello";

vs.

string hello_alias = @"hello";

Printing out on the console makes no difference, the length properties are the same.

Answer 1

It marks the string as a verbatim string literal - anything in the string that would normally be interpreted as an escape sequence is ignored.

So "C:\Users\Rich" is the same as @"C:UsersRich"

There is one exception: an escape sequence is needed for the double quote. To escape a double quote, you need to put two double quotes in a row. For instance, @"""" evaluates to ".