4 ms·

"Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious" That, Sir, is none of your business.

by 13of40 3y ago

Wowfunhappy 3y ago
...I kind of wish compilers supported nested block comments. So if there's a /* inside of a /*, it would take two */'s to end it. Idk, maybe that would be a terrible idea in practice. But there are lots of instances where it would have saved me time.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  You're probably looking for "#if 0" / "#endif".
  - TillE 3y ago
    Yeah it took me a while to adopt this common practice when I need to "comment out" a large block of code. Just use the preprocessor, it's much simpler.
    - Karellen 3y ago
      FWIW, replacing comments with whitespace is also done by the preprocessor.
  - billforsternz 3y ago
    The fact that you can't do this with new fangled languages is one of the reasons I don't use new fangled languages
    - zzo38computer 3y ago
      That and other things I dislike about many of the new fangled languages.
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        I prefer using completely unfangled languages, thank you very much.
- kevincox 3y ago
  the D Language supports /+ and +/ as a variant of /* which supports nesting. So you can pick which you need for a given comment.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Already an option on Borland compilers for MS-DOS.
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  How about explicit depth levels, specified by asterisk count? e.g. '/*' and '*/' would match each other, '/**' and '**/' would match, and so on. That way, you would have full control of the depth of the comments, removing other comments wouldn't break the inner comments, etc. I do run into the same issue you're describing, so I think there's value in the idea.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    Like Lua, where comments can be delimited by `--[==[`..`]==]`, where the number of equals signs can be anything but has to match in order for the comment to actually close?
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    The core idea here is that when I'm commenting out a block of code for testing, I don't really want to think about what is inside of it. So while I think this might help, I'd rather just have /* with one asterisk nest. What I'm not sure of is whether there's an edge case I haven't thought of which would make this problematic.
- legobmw99 3y ago
  I believe OCaml does this
- RGBCube 3y ago
  FYI, Rust and many other modern languages do this.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Not terrible at all. It's super-useful to temporarily comment out a bit of code, and then to comment out a larger block surrounding it. Especially when debugging. Sadly I've never used a language that supported that.
  - wavemode 3y ago
    Common Lisp has nested comments with the #| reader macro. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node191.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node191.html
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

"Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious" That, Sir, is none of your business.

by 13of40 3y ago

"Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious" That, Sir, is none of your business.

...I kind of wish compilers supported nested block comments. So if there's a /* inside of a /*, it would take two */'s to end it. Idk, maybe that would be a terrible idea in practice. But there are lots of instances where it would have saved me time.

duskwuff 3y ago
You're probably looking for "#if 0" / "#endif".
- TillE 3y ago
  Yeah it took me a while to adopt this common practice when I need to "comment out" a large block of code. Just use the preprocessor, it's much simpler.
  - Karellen 3y ago
    FWIW, replacing comments with whitespace is also done by the preprocessor.
- billforsternz 3y ago
  The fact that you can't do this with new fangled languages is one of the reasons I don't use new fangled languages
  - zzo38computer 3y ago
    That and other things I dislike about many of the new fangled languages.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      I prefer using completely unfangled languages, thank you very much.
kevincox 3y ago
the D Language supports /+ and +/ as a variant of /* which supports nesting. So you can pick which you need for a given comment.
pjmlp 3y ago
Already an option on Borland compilers for MS-DOS.
arcanemachiner 3y ago
How about explicit depth levels, specified by asterisk count? e.g. '/*' and '*/' would match each other, '/**' and '**/' would match, and so on. That way, you would have full control of the depth of the comments, removing other comments wouldn't break the inner comments, etc. I do run into the same issue you're describing, so I think there's value in the idea.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- LoganDark 3y ago
  Like Lua, where comments can be delimited by `--[==[`..`]==]`, where the number of equals signs can be anything but has to match in order for the comment to actually close?
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  The core idea here is that when I'm commenting out a block of code for testing, I don't really want to think about what is inside of it. So while I think this might help, I'd rather just have /* with one asterisk nest. What I'm not sure of is whether there's an edge case I haven't thought of which would make this problematic.
legobmw99 3y ago
I believe OCaml does this
RGBCube 3y ago
FYI, Rust and many other modern languages do this.
crazygringo 3y ago
Not terrible at all. It's super-useful to temporarily comment out a bit of code, and then to comment out a larger block surrounding it. Especially when debugging. Sadly I've never used a language that supported that.
- wavemode 3y ago
  Common Lisp has nested comments with the #| reader macro. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node191.html https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node191.html
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]