Article View: comp.std.c
Article #2292Re: comment style
From: Walter Bright
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 1991 02:46
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 1991 02:46
42 lines
1787 bytes
1787 bytes
In article <4423@alliant.Alliant.COM> tj@Alliant.COM (Tom Jaskiewicz) writes:
<If you do add // comments to c, what does the following code do?
</* printf("One\n"); /* 1 */
< printf("Two\n"); /* 2 */
</* printf("Three\n");
<// printf("Four\n"); /* 4 */
< printf("Five\n"); /* 5 */
<// printf("Six\n"); /* 6
< printf("Seven\n"); /* 7 */
</* printf("Eight\n");
<// */ printf("Nine\n");
< printf("Ten\n"); /* 10 */
Removing commented out structures we get:
printf("Two\n");
printf("Five\n");
printf("Seven\n");
printf("Nine\n");
printf("Ten\n");
No problem. The rules to remember are:
o When inside a comment, the only thing recognized is an end-of-comment
for the type of comment you're inside. If you're in a /* comment,
characters are eaten until you see a */. If you're in a //
comment, characters are eaten until you see a newline.
o As a corollary, comments do not nest.
o Backslashes \ that terminate a line are removed and lines are
spliced *before* comment processing is done. (Anything else would
cause a major monkey wrench into the ANSI C phases of translation
verbage.) This means that:
a = b; // this \
text is part of the comment!
a = b; /\
/ this text is a comment!
a = b; /* *\
/ "this text is not part of a comment!";
The idea behind \ line splicing is that it can be done in a very
simple context-free manner.
Technical Details
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!fnx!nazgul!bright From: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) Newsgroups: comp.std.c Subject: Re: comment style Message-ID: <226@nazgul.UUCP> Date: 15 Jan 91 02:46:30 GMT References: <4423@alliant.Alliant.COM> Reply-To: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) Organization: Zortech, Seattle Lines: 42