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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!spdcc!ima!haddock!karl
From: karl@haddock.ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Q-> can you nest comments in var names?
Keywords: C, c, identifiers, nested, comments, Kernighan, Ritchie
Message-ID: <18482@haddock.ima.isc.com>
Date: 11 Oct 90 01:05:34 GMT
References: <1990Oct10.211829.3168@eng.umd.edu>
Reply-To: karl@ima.isc.com (Karl Heuer)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Cambridge, MA 02138-5302
Lines: 10
Supersedes: <18481@haddock.ima.isc.com>

In article <1990Oct10.211829.3168@eng.umd.edu> rfink@eng.umd.edu (Russell A. Fink) writes:
>By rules of Kernighan and Ritchie, or standard adaptations of the
>language, can I nest comments within variable names?
>	printf ("Value is %d", num/* this is obnoxious */ber);

It's illegal (because comments are whitespace) in ANSI C.  In Classic C it's
illegal according to the book, but legal by common practice, so the practical
answer is that it's implementation-dependent.

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