Re: [Caml-list] single-line comment request

[Chris Hecker <checker@d6.com>]

>Again, this extension is purely stylish.

Actually, just to fuel the fire, it's not just stylish.  Single-line 
comments are sometimes easier to work with programmatically (no need to 
count {[()]} to see where the comment ends, rectangular editing commands 
can comment and uncomment blocks, end of line is sometimes ragged so 
commenting out cannot be done linearly without editor macro trickery, 
wasted characters and movement for single line comments (which I would 
assume are the majority of comments by number, if not by lines), 
etc.).  Also, using camlp4 for this slows down compiles.

I don't think this is the most important feature ever, but it would be nice 
for more than just stylistic reasons.

I would assume there are lots of two-character combinations that are 
invalid and that don't hose cpp, like "(|" which is even a bit iconographic 
for the task, in my opinion.  Somebody better at compilers than me could 
probably write a program to parse the .y and .l files and generate all 
unused and invalid two-character combinations.

Hmm, I just did a quick test to check the assumption of whether single-line 
comments are more common.  In my code, 86% of comments are single line.  In 
the compiler bytecomp directory, 89% are single line.  Make of that what 
you will.

Chris


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