Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!sei!sei.cmu.edu!firth From: firth@sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: language commenting constructs Message-ID: <8825@aw.sei.cmu.edu> Date: 17 Mar 89 14:14:56 GMT References: <1543@zen.UUCP> <12362@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: netnews@sei.cmu.edu Reply-To: firth@bd.sei.cmu.edu (Robert Firth) Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, SEI, Pgh, Pa Lines: 43 One of the things I've wanted to do in almost any of the programming languages I've used, is comment out in a simple way a fairly large piece of code, without having to worry about whether that code itself contains comments. There are three ways to do this with which I'm familiar (a) Have a comment introduced by a sentinel and terminated by end-of-line. One then comments out by inserting the sentinel in front of every line: C Debugging code commented out C CC Print current value of chipmunk queue C C CALL CHQPNT(CHQ) Most editors have an easy way to do this. (b) Have comments introduced and terminated by paired sentinels that strictly nest: { BEGIN Debugging code commented out { print current value of chipmunk queue } chipmunk queue print ( chipmunk queue ); Debugging commented out code END } (c) Use line comments normally and reserve block comments for commenting out: /* Debugging code commented out // print current value of chupmunk queue ChQ.Print(ChQ) */ All of these seem to work moderately well; in a language that permits none of them I sometimes get very frustrated!