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Programming languages should NOT have comment statements

Published:01 October 1988Publication History
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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to open discussion on the adequacy and design of commenting techniques in programming (and, indeed, all computer processing) languages. The argument is made that the common notion of comment statements is too simplistics, and that a powerful alternative exists. A distinction is made between simple comment statements and scoped comments. Two types of scoped comments are mentioned, and their weaknesses are considered. The paper ends with a call for language designers to address this issue.

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  1. Programming languages should NOT have comment statements

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        cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
        ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 23, Issue 10
        Oct. 1988
        142 pages
        ISSN:0362-1340
        EISSN:1558-1160
        DOI:10.1145/51607
        Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 1988 Author

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 October 1988

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