@this and that

Chris Sells points writes about a piece of C# code that freaked him out:

class Class1 {
   static void Foo(object @this) {
      Console.WriteLine(@this);
   }

   static void Main(string[] args) {
      Foo("hi");
   }
}

In case you don't quite see it... a keyword (this) is being used as a variable to represent something other than the current object. You can do this because placing the @ before a variable tells the compiler to ignore it as a keyword. It's kind of cool, but also confusing I think. VB has a similar ability if you wrap the variable in square brackets (for instance you can name something [Me]).

I knew about the square brackets in VB, but only thought an @ in C# could be used in front of a literal string. You learn something new every day.