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

Reference

$ is short-hand for String.Format and is used with string interpolations, which is a new feature of C# 6. As used in your case, it does nothing, just as string.Format() would do nothing.

It is comes into its own when used to build strings with reference to other values. What previously had to be written as:

var anInt = 1;
var aBool = true;
var aString = "3";
var formated = string.Format("{0},{1},{2}", anInt, aBool, aString);

Now becomes:

var anInt = 1;
var aBool = true;
var aString = "3";
var formated = $"{anInt},{aBool},{aString}";

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There's also an alternative form of string interpolation using $@ (the order of the two symbols is important). It allows the features of a @"" string to be mixed with $"" to support string interpolations without the need for \\ throughout your string. So the following two lines:

var someDir = "a";
Console.WriteLine($@"c:\{someDir}\b\c");

will output:

c:\a\b\c