What's the use/meaning of the @ character in variable names in C#?

Question

I discovered that you can start your variable name with a \'@\' character in C#. In my C# project I was using a web service (I added a web reference to my project) that was

Answer 1

Another use case are extension methods. The first, special parameter can be distinguished to denote its real meaning with @this name. An example:

public static TValue GetValueOrDefault(
    this IDictionary @this,
    TKey key,
    TValue defaultValue)
    {
        if (!@this.ContainsKey(key))
        {
            return defaultValue;
        }

        return @this[key];
    }