allow the use of variable names that would otherwise conflict with keywords. The same is achieved in VB.Net by enclosing the name in square brackets, as in [end]. The "@" prefix can also be applied to string literals; see literal affixes below. Hungarian notation Related to sigils is Hungarian notation, a naming convention for variables that specifies variable type by attaching certain alphabetic prefixes to the variable name. Unlike sigils, however, Hungarian notation provides no information to the compiler; as such, explicit types must be redundantly specified for the variables (unless using a language with type inference). As most standard compilers do not enforce use of the prefixes, this permits omission and also makes code prone to confusion due to accidental erroneous use. Literal affixes While sigils are applied to names (identifiers), similar prefixes and suffixes can be applied to literals, notably integer literals and string literals, specifying either how the literal should be evaluated, or what data type it is. For example, 0x10ULL evaluates to the value 16 as an unsigned long long integer in C++: the 0x prefix indicates hexadecimal, while the suffix ULL indicates unsigned long long. Similarly, prefixes are often used to indicate a raw string, such as r"C:\Windows" in Python, which represents the string with value C:\Windows; as an escaped string this would be written as "C:\\Windows". As this affects the semantics (value) of a literal, rather than the syntax or semantics of an identifier (name), this is neither stropping (identifier syntax) nor a sigil (identifier semantics), but it is syntactically similar. Java annotations Compare Java annotations such as @Override and @Deprecated. Confusion In some cases the same syntax can be used for distinct purposes, which can cause confusion. For example, in C#, the "@" prefix can be used either for stropping (to allow reserved words to be used as identifiers), or as a prefix to a literal (to indicate a raw string); in this case neither use is a sigil, as it affects the syntax of identifiers or the semantics of literals, not the semantics of identifiers. See also Delimiter Source code Token References Source code Variable (computer science) Naming conventions