On 03/09/17 12:29, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 02/09/2017 6:57 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
On 03/09/17 03:56, William Dunlap via R-help wrote:
Is the reason you want a block comment containing code (as opposed to
arbitrary text) that you want to be able to easily run the commented out
code? If so the 'if()' construct has the advantage that you only
need to
change code at the start of the comment, not at both ends.
The if(FALSE) could be if(isTRUE(getOption("DEBUG_ISSUE_XYZ"))) so you
would not even have to change code to re-enable the debugging code, just
call options(DEBUG_ISSUE_XYX=TRUE)).
(a) The foregoing is getting too subtle for my feeble brain.
(b) A fundamental problem with the
if(FALSE) {
...
}
paradigm is that the enclosed code must be syntactically valid, and
there are certainly situations in which one might wish to comment out
sections of code that are *not* syntactically valid. E.g. one might
wish to comment out *part* of a piece of syntactically valid code for
the purpose of experimenting with an alternative approach.
If the code is not syntactically valid, why would you expect the block
comment to be syntactically valid?
I thought I had made that clear. One might wish to comment out a
*piece* of syntactically valid code (with a view to replacing it).
The piece commented out might not be syntactically valid simply because
it is *just a piece* and might thereby be incomplete.
The proposal at the start of this
thread was that #{ would open the block and would be matched by }# to
close the block. What if the closing sequence occurred within the block
unintentionally? Then the poor feeble programmer would be even more
confused.
Do not the same considerations essentially apply to the well established
/* .... */ convention used in C? Well maybe you simply *can't* get the
"*/" string within a block of C code, but still ....
If "#{....}#" runs this risk, then some other construction which doesn't
run the risk could be used.
I like the current rule:
De gustibus non disputandum.
any line starting with # is a comment.
(Actually the rule is a bit more subtle than that, but it's close.)
If I want to comment out a block, I can spend a long time typing # at
the start of every line, or I can ask my editor to do it. I don't need
to worry if something in the block unintentionally closes it, because
that's impossible. If the first line is a comment, all the rest are too.
I don't follow the foregoing, but no matter. I'm slow.
This issue is quite obviously No Big Deal. Block comments are a
convenience that it would be nice to have, but obviously one can live
without them and not suffer unduly.
cheers,
Rolf
--
Technical Editor ANZJS
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276
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