C# Strings

A string is a sequence of characters. In C#, string is the language keyword for the System.String type. Every string literal you write produces a System.String instance.

String literals

C# offers four literal forms. Each form suits different content. As a quick guide:

• Use regular literals for short, simple text with at most a few escape sequences.
• Use verbatim literals when backslashes dominate the content, such as Windows paths or regex patterns, but prefer raw string literals for new code for the same functionality.
• Use raw string literals for multiline or structurally formatted text, such as inline JSON, SQL, XML, or formatted message blocks.
• Add a $ prefix to any of the aforementioned literals to get an interpolated string when you need to embed values.
• Add a u8 suffix to a literal to produce a UTF-8 byte sequence (a ReadOnlySpan<T> of byte) for byte-oriented APIs. See UTF-8 string literals in the language reference for details.