Comments?

Comments?

[Gold Rush Graphics]

I have a question...I am learning some programming languages and have
noticed that some languages such as Pascal and C++ use delimiters on both
ends of comments. Other languages, such as Fortran and Ada, use a symbol of
symbols to indicate the beginning of a comment and the end of line to
terminate it. Why would these languages take such different aprouches to
solving the same problem and which method is better?

--Seth

Re: Comments?

[David C. Hoos, Sr.]

Gold Rush Graphics wrote in message <77qt10$c2m$1@winter.news.rcn.net>...
>I have a question...I am learning some programming languages and have
>noticed that some languages such as Pascal and C++ use delimiters on both
>ends of comments. Other languages, such as Fortran and Ada, use a symbol of
>symbols to indicate the beginning of a comment and the end of line to
>terminate it. Why would these languages take such different aprouches to
>solving the same problem and which method is better?
>
If you'll look again, you'll find that C++ also uses only leading
delimiters,
i.e., "//".

The only advantage to comments delimited on both ends is that you can have
multi-line comments, in such a case.

Re: Comments?

[Matthew Heaney]

"Gold Rush Graphics" <goldrushgraphics@erols.com> writes:

> I have a question...I am learning some programming languages and have
> noticed that some languages such as Pascal and C++ use delimiters on both
> ends of comments. Other languages, such as Fortran and Ada, use a symbol of
> symbols to indicate the beginning of a comment and the end of line to
> terminate it. Why would these languages take such different aprouches to
> solving the same problem and which method is better?

The reason Ada avoided a comment terminator is so that you can't
accidently comment-out any code.  

If you're using Pascal or C, then be sure to use an editor that supports
color-coding.  You have to make it obvious which part of your code is
comment, and which is not.

Re: Comments?

[robert_dewar]

In article <m3r9sugz5g.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>,
  Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org> wrote:
> If you're using Pascal or C, then be sure to use an
> editor that supports color-coding.  You have to make it
> obvious which part of your code is comment, and which is
> not.

UCSD Pascal generated a warning when you commented out
a semicolon, quite useful :-)

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Re: Comments?

[Lance Kibblewhite]

robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com wrote:

>In article <m3r9sugz5g.fsf@mheaney.ni.net>,
>  Matthew Heaney <matthew_heaney@acm.org> wrote:
>> If you're using Pascal or C, then be sure to use an
>> editor that supports color-coding.  You have to make it
>> obvious which part of your code is comment, and which is
>> not.
>
>UCSD Pascal generated a warning when you commented out
>a semicolon, quite useful :-)

How did one sift through the false negatives, looking for the true
negatives?  Or did this simply cause semicolons to be not used within
comments?