Answers to 'can I nest comments?'

[Paul John Falstad]

In article <1990Oct12.164737.23574 at eng.umd.edu> rfink at eng.umd.edu (Russell A. Fink) writes:
>Just a follow-up note to the question I asked a couple of days back.
>Thanks to all who gave answers. For the record, the unanimous
>concensus was that nested comments become whitespace, or, more
>specifically, 
>     printf( "The value of number is: %d.\n", num/* this is obnoxious */ber );
>becomes
>     printf( "The value of number is: %d.\n", num ber );
>
>HOWEVER, that is just the standard implementation. Several compilers will
>reportedly generate
>     printf( "The value of number is: %d.\n", number );
>
>although, by K&R et. al., there are no guarantees.

According to K&R2 (p229):

"comments are replaced by a single space."

So it is part of ANSI, not just the usual implementation.  Compilers that
do generate "number" are not ANSI-conformant.

The subject line for this thread is misleading, by the way.  "Nested
comments" are something different than what you're talking about.
"Comments embedded in identifiers" would be a better terminology.

--
pfalstad at phoenix.princeton.edu   The Germans are disputing it! Hegel is
arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-absolutistic
ethics; Kant, by the categorical imperative, is holding it ontologically
exists only in the imagination; and Marx is claiming it was off sides.