From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.66.65.75 with SMTP id v11mr849238pas.30.1409797836294; Wed, 03 Sep 2014 19:30:36 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.50.80.42 with SMTP id o10mr25134igx.4.1409797836170; Wed, 03 Sep 2014 19:30:36 -0700 (PDT) Path: border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!r2no13944581igi.0!news-out.google.com!aw9ni2087igc.0!nntp.google.com!r2no13944576igi.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2014 19:30:35 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <50c9cfe2-caa7-4d0d-956e-6c7e99023f46@googlegroups.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=123.2.70.40; posting-account=S_MdrwoAAAD7T2pxG2e393dk6y0tc0Le NNTP-Posting-Host: 123.2.70.40 References: <8fd27434-43c2-4bd1-b72b-dd7a0ef5af75@googlegroups.com> <50c9cfe2-caa7-4d0d-956e-6c7e99023f46@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <5489ed0e-4298-42bd-a06d-b5ec10b4c163@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: Is there a way to do large block of source code comments From: robin.vowels@gmail.com Injection-Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 02:30:36 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:188853 Date: 2014-09-03T19:30:35-07:00 List-Id: On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 10:50:53 AM UTC+10, Adam Beneschan wrote: > On Tuesday, September 2, 2014 5:07:56 PM UTC-7, robin....@gmail.com wrote: > > > > > > No, this was explicitly omitted. See the Ada-83 Rationale 2.1: "Single comments > > > > that are larger than one line are not provided. Such comments would require a > > > > closing comment delimiter and this would again raise the dangers associated with > > > > the (unintentional) omission of the closing delimiter: entire sections of a > > > > program could be ignored by the compiler without the programmer realizing it, so > > > > that the program would not mean what he thinks. Long comments can be written as > > > > a succession of single line comments, thus combining elegance with safety." > > > > > When a block of code is to be omitted (temporarily or semi-permanently) > > > it's convenient to have something like /* and */ as comment markers. > > > > > > It's also convenient to have comment markers for long blocks of comments. > > > > > > Live parsing editors are useful tools, because they highlight > > > code segments (including comments). > > > > > > The above quotation is mere hype, like the author's justification for omitting > > > exponentiation in Pascal, somehow more convenient to use log and exp instead! > > > > No, the quotation was not hype. Certainly was hype. And Pascal came out well before Ada did. > The problems caused by missing end-comment delimiters were real. Really? > If you're thinking that this shouldn't be a problem because of "live parsing > editors", you're right--in 2014. They were around from at least by the 1990s. > But the document that you claim contains "mere hype" > is the Ada 83 Rationale, which came out in (drum roll) 1983. > (Or perhaps a bit later, but the rationales weren't rationalizations > created after the fact.) Ada's development started several years before > that. The IBM PC came out in 1981, and it would have been some time before > GUI editors were available (Eclipse was first released on 2001). > Before the PC, the video systems that programmers had available for > developing programs would have been monochrome terminals with one font > (but perhaps with some bold-face and reverse-video capabilities) > and no graphics. The screen-oriented editors I remember using for Pascal > programming did not have any awareness of program syntax, > like today's tools do.