=head1 TITLE Multiline Comments for Perl. =head1 VERSION Maintainer: Michael J. Mathews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 01 Aug 2000 Version: 1 Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Number: 5 =head1 ABSTRACT Unlike many programming languages Perl does not currently implement true multiline comments. This can be confusing/tedious to programmers. This could be solved by adding a syntax to Perl 6 that would allow for true multiline comments. =head1 DESCRIPTION Comments are important to programmers as a way of documenting their code and for debugging purposes. While it is true to add formatted documentation to perl using POD tags, this can be overkill if a programmer simply wishes to add lines of information here and there that are not intended to be public. In fact crafty programmers can even simulate multiline comments using POD tags, but this seems like a misuse of a feature intended for another purpose, and can interfere with real PODs in a script. =head1 IMPLEMENTATION Perl currently allows for sigle-line comments using the pound-symbol "#". Any implementation of a Perl multline comment should feel similar to this. However (ideally) the multline syntax would be unique enough so that it would not conflict with older scripts using the literal "\#" (in a regex for example) or in any single-line comment of arbitrary text. =head2 Nesting Since multiline comments will have a beginning and an ending it will be possible to nest and overlap commented sections of perl. Nesting and overlapping should be allowed and supported. In the case of nesting, the outermost comment is enforced, in the case of overlapping the comments should be treated as if they were joined. In the case of a single-line comment overlapping a multiline comment, the multiline would end the sigle-line comment and would in all other ways take precedence. =head2 Proposal Using a two-character syntax to start and end a multiline comment seems to be a good way to satisfy both the desired similarity to "#" and the desired uniqueness to avoid collision with real single-line quotes. I would suggest a (# many lines of comment #) syntax: this is not ignored; neither is this; (# this is a multiline comment so it IS ignored #) but this is not ignored; It would be very rare to find the "(#" or "#)" character combination in a perl script being used as part of a single-line comment, and yet it is an intuative extension of "#" idea. =head1 REFERENCES
