From: dagbrown@... (Dave Brown) Date: 2003-11-17T10:26:46+09:00 Subject: Re: multi line comments in ruby In article , Artur Merke wrote: : Hi, : : some time (years ;-) ago there was a discussion about multi line comments : in ruby on this list. I didn't follow it completely, just found it in : news.google. There were sth. about 60 postings but AFAIK today (and it is : 2 years later!) there is still no other way to make multi line comments : in ruby then the cumbersome : : =begin : ... : =end : : block? Is this right, or have I simply missed something? : : IMHO a simple c/c++ style comment : : /* : ... : */ : : is missing in ruby! No great loss. (I know, I know, I sound like one of those annoying people who say "no, you don't NEED features and functionality!", but bear with me here.) If you ever go through lots of C code, you'll probably notice that most multiline comments--at least those written in code by good programmers who have to work with other people--you'll probably notice this: /* Multiline comments have a row of stars down the left hand side * of the comment block so that the comment stands out from the * rest of the code. Heck, my text editor (vim) automatically put * these stars in for me. */ I have a sneaky feeling that "use a text editor that cooperates with you" addresses another issue that you'd have with the lack of multi-line comments--it's harder to type them in and reformat them when you have to keep worrying about the '#' marks everywhere. Fear not! A decent code editor will worry about that for you. Also, it's nice to have an easy way to do one-liner comments; witness the fact that C++'s "//" is now a standard comment character in the C99 standard. At least it's not a capital C in the first column. Now, because Matz provides features (and you use them), you do still have =begin/=end, but I usually use those for embedded- documentation things rather than for comments. Personally, I prefer to have comments that are obviously comments, even when I'm not using a syntax-highlighting editor. Perhaps your text editor is cooperating too well with you? :-) --Dave