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From: hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Program Errors and developement environment
Message-ID: <4032@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Date: 11 Mar 89 01:32:39 GMT
References: <4352@enea.se> <2950@hound.UUCP> <3998@ttidca.TTI.COM> <756@twwells.uucp>
Reply-To: hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath)
Organization: The Cat Factory
Lines: 33


In article <756@twwells.uucp> bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
}There's a much better way of dealing with this: have a lint complain
}when a /* occurs in a comment or a /* is not terminated.  Such a
}program is very short, less than a hundred lines (write it as a FSM),
}and will catch all errors of this type.  Add it to your toolkit and
}stop worrying about this problem. ...

}... I *will not* debate this. I suggest that you don't debate it
}either; such debates are rarely fruitful. Just make up your own mind,
}pick a consistent style, and adhere to it.

I don't want to debate either, but several people, including you, seem to
have missed my original point, so I'll try to improve my explanation.

I'm not worried about unterminated comments so much as un-noticed comments.
When you've got something like

[much crufty code]
/*
[much crufty code commented out]
*/
[much more crufty code]

It's very easy to miss the fact that those middle lines aren't live code.
That can cause you to waste time trying to fix them or wondering why code
you've added to them doesn't work.

-- 
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, hollombe@ttidca.tti.com)  Illegitimati Nil
Citicorp(+)TTI                                                 Carborundum
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