Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!pacbell!pacbell.com!ames!xanth!mcnc!decvax.dec.com!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Re: warning: '/*' within comment
Message-ID: <16775@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 4 Jun 90 03:20:26 GMT
References: <1990Jun1.200433.6919@druid.uucp> <13040@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 26

In article <13040@smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>[correctly points out that quotes are meaningless in a comment]
>My advice to you is to tell your compiler vendor that you don't
>appreciate gratuitous warning messages,

The compiler in question was gcc, and it doesn't produce this warning by
default.  You have to enable it.

>and that
>	/*	stuff;	/* comment */
>is a fairly common usage...

Certainly, people who use this common-yet-questionable style should leave the
warning disabled.  Those of us who find it atrocious can enable the warning,
thereby catching the common error of an unclosed comment.

[D'arcy originally wrote:]
>/*
>Sample usage:
>	mkscript src/*.c src/*.h src/makefile man/* readme > dist.txt
>*/

Although you can silence the warning easily enough, note that changing the
example to include something like `*/foo.c' could be surprising.

Karl W. Z. Heuer (karl@ima.ima.isc.com or harvard!ima!karl), The Walking Lint