Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!feeder01.blueworldhosting.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED!nerds-end From: "BartC" Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Comments, was Programming language and IDE design Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 13:15:04 -0400 (EDT) Organization: virginmedia.com Lines: 19 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <14-08-001@comp.compilers> References: <13-10-016@comp.compilers> <13-10-022@comp.compilers> <13-10-025@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="utf-8"; reply-type=response Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: miucha.iecc.com 1406913304 16794 2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970 (1 Aug 2014 17:15:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 17:15:04 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: syntax, design, comment Posted-Date: 01 Aug 2014 13:15:04 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:1357 "BartC" wrote in message news:13-10-025@comp.compilers... > (I've used 'fi', 'esac' and 'od' for 30 years, they seem completely > natural to me. However, 'hctiws', 'pool', 'nigeb', 'noitcnuf' and such > look seriously weird...) > > [ COMMENT looks fine to me TNEMMOC -John] That would be preferable to actual Algol-68 syntax which seems to use COMMENT ... COMMENT bracketing. If used to comment out blocks of code, you can't tell, at a glance, whether any particular COMMENT is an opening or closing one! It makes nested comments awkward too; a bit like using {,{ braces instead of {,}. -- Bartc [Algol68 used comment, co, #, or ¢ (a cent sign) in matching pairs to delimit comments, sort of like recent languages use '' and "" for strings. No doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time. -John]