Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!pegasus!hansen
From: hansen@pegasus.ATT.COM (Tony L. Hansen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ Comments
Message-ID: <2900@pegasus.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 May 89 23:40:31 GMT
References: <6957@brunix.UUCP> <24700@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: hansen@pegasus.ATT.COM (Tony L. Hansen)
Organization: AT&T ISL Middletown NJ USA
Lines: 28

<>Consider the following C++ source line:
<>
<>    //**********************
<>
<>How should this be treated by the C++ compiler?  The GNU g++ compiler
<>treats this as a comment-to-EOL followed by a bunch of asterisks, but the
<>AT&T compiler treats it as a slash followed by an open-comment delimiter.
<>I want the former interpretation, and I can't find anything in Stroustrup's
<>book which indicates that any other interpretation is to be expected.
<
<I'm new to C++, but C has always used a "greedy" parsing algorithm (that is,
<it always takes the longest possible next token); I don't know why C++ would
<do otherwise.  From K&R, p. 179:
<
<    If the input stream has been parsed into tokens up to a given character,
<    the next token is taken to include the longest string of characters which
<    could possibly constitute a token.
<
<g++ is doing the right thing, and the AT&T compiler is wrong.

Actually, the problem is with the C preprocessor being used with the cfront
compiler, not with the AT&T compiler. The G++ preprocessor deals with //
comments. Whatever vendor supplied your port of cfront should have also used
a preprocessor which understands // comments.

					Tony Hansen
				att!pegasus!hansen, attmail!tony
				    hansen@pegasus.att.com