Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!uhccux!munnari.oz.au!cs.mu.oz.au!ok From: ok@cs.mu.oz.au (Richard O'Keefe) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: quotes inside #if 0 Keywords: ANSI, comments Message-ID: <2014@munnari.oz.au> Date: 4 Sep 89 09:58:00 GMT Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au Lines: 20 I've just tried to compile a medium-sized program using a compiler which tries to be ANSI-compliant. The program was full of large comments like #if 0 #endif The compiler sees words like "don't" in the English text and snarls that these are unterminated character constants. This used to be perfectly good C, and whatever the reason for ANSI C breaking well-commented programs, I personally think the cost is way too high. Spilled milk, alas. The editor I use has a "comment-out-region" command which inserts spaces between asterisks and slashes so that I can fix this by deleting the #if 0 and #endif and using that command. I'd rather not: having / * a nested comment * / in a file is asking for some clown to come along later and "correct" it. Is there a way of having mixed English text and C fragments (possibly including C comment delimiters) in a C program which _will_ work in ANSI C?