----- Original Message -----

From:

"Steve Nickolas" <usotsuki@buric.co>

To:

"The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs@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.