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

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 doesn't make any difference; the length properties are the same.

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:\Users\Rich"

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 ".

Stack Overflow Q#556133, score: 997