[TUHS] // comment in C++

[brantleycoile@me.com (Brantley Coile)]

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That’s a good convention. I use the convention that the permanent comments use the slash-splat form and the slash-slash from is used for temporary comment that will need attention later. They are TODO comments. 

I also use empty comments in the first column to note debugging stuff to remove laters. For example:

void
main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	ARGBEGIN {
	default:
		usage();
	} ARGEND
/**/	print(“argc=%d argv=%p\n”, argc, argv);
/**/	if (argc == 3)
/**/		print(“that funny number again\n”);
	if (argc == 0) {
		usestdin();
	…
}

This lets the flow of the test logic clear yet is easy to find and remove the code later. 

I also use “#ifdef notdef” to comment out blocks of code. Have done since v7 days. Once I worked with a guy who saw the ifdefs and wondered what the function was that was def’ed out. He added -Dnotdef and all hell broke out!

  Brantley

> On Feb 8, 2017, at 11:55 PM, Steve Johnson <scj at yaccman.com> wrote:
> 
> Well, personally I use // for almost all comments in C/C++.  I reserve /* */ for commenting out blocks of code.   Since, for some reason, /* */ doesn't nest, if I stick to this style life is good.
> 
> Steve
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> "Steve Nickolas" <usotsuki at buric.co>
> 
> To:
> "The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
> Cc:
> 
> Sent:
> Wed, 8 Feb 2017 21:47:49 -0500 (EST)
> Subject:
> Re: [TUHS] // comment in C++
> 
> 
> On Thu, 9 Feb 2017, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 8 Feb 2017, Steve Johnson wrote:
> >
> >> I remember some discussion about this.  In reality, a C comment really
> >> requires you to type 8 characters, because putting anything adjacent to
> >> the /* or */ looks terrible.  Many languages used single characters
> >> (e.g., # for make).  The argument was "if you make comments easier to
> >> type, you'll get more of them in the code"  (viz. the Unix kernel).  I'm
> >> guessing Bjarne was aware of these discussions, although I don't
> >> remember specifically that he was...
> >
> > My favourite C /* */ style is this:
> >
> > /*
> > * foo
> > * bar
> > */
> 
> This is the way I usually write my comments, too.
> 
> > Is that what you meant? And recent C also accepts // as a comment, which
> > I use like this:
> >
> > /*
> > * This is where we do some neat stuff.
> > */
> > foo();
> > weird_function();	// Yes, we need to call this here...
> > bar();
> >
> > I'm quite taken by BIND, though, which accepts
> >
> > /* this */
> > // this
> > # and this.
> 
> Unrealircd likewise accepts those 3 different types of comments.
> 
> -uso.