Do I need to escape backslash in a config file?

c# .net configuration escaping app-config
RogerS picture RogerS · Apr 16, 2011 · Viewed 27.3k times · Source

I have a config file, myapp.exe.config. In the file I have an attribute with a fullpath filename as the value.

<add key="InfoFile" value="c:\temp\info.txt" />

It seems to work if I use a single or double backslash. That is, 

<add key="InfoFile" value="c:\\temp\\info.txt" />

works also. What is the correct way to do this?

Answer

Mat&#237;as Fidemraizer picture Matías Fidemraizer · Apr 16, 2011

You don't need that. Anything within an attribute value is character data.

Since you're reading these values using C#, they'll get escaped as if they would be a literal path string in code.

Anyway, you might want to know that C# has @ operator to declare verbatim strings, meaning that you don't need to escape backslashes when using literal paths in code:

string somePath = @"C:\blah\blih\bluh.txt";

Related questions

Reading settings from app.config or web.config in .NET

I'm working on a C# class library that needs to be able to read settings from the web.config or app.config file (depending on whether the DLL is referenced from an ASP.NET web application or a Windows Forms …

Read More
How to use ConfigurationManager

I want to use App.config for storing some setting. I tried to use the next code for getting a parameter from a config file. private string GetSettingValue(string paramName) { return String.Format(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[paramName]); } I also added System.…

Read More
.NET Configuration (app.config/web.config/settings.settings)

I have a .NET application which has different configuration files for Debug and Release builds. E.g. the debug app.config file points to a development SQL Server which has debugging enabled and the release target points to the live …

Read More