From: Sean Carley <seanacarley@...>
Date: 2001-07-05T22:09:06+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:17291] Re: /* */ comments

From: "Guy N. Hurst" <gnhurst@hurstlinks.com>
> This made me realize that we may not be able to (easily) have
> nested comments without resorting to a second pass. There are
> a number of scenarios I can think of that would complicate things.

I don't think these situations should be too difficult to handle.

> # this is a comment
> a = 5
> /*
> and this is
> a grouping of
>   /* more comments
> */
> b = "will this be evaluated?"

If we are nesting comments, the last line would not be evaluated and there
would be a parse error if the script ended without closing the first /*.

> /*
> =begin
> what about this?
> Am I RD or a comment?
> */
> =end # error or not?

I would expect /* (/# better) to have a higher precedence than =begin, but
even if they have the same precedence, it should be incorrect to cross
comment blocks.  Either =begin should be ignored because it is inside /* */
and we should have an error on =end, or =begin should start a new comment
block and we should have an error on the */ due to incorrect comment block
closure.  Either way, /* =begin */ =end should not be a valid token order.
Neither should =begin /* =end */.

Of course this is still my personal opinion.

Sean Carley