[Python-ideas] Multi-line comment blocks.

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Carl Meyer <carl at oddbird.net> wrote:
> On 06/15/2012 04:51 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 3:47 PM, David Gates <gatesda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My proposal wasn't for people who hand-code the single-line comment syntax
>>> but for those that use multi-line string comments.  Since the multi-line
>>> string hack's BDFL-approved, people will use it and other people will have
>>> to deal with it.
>>
>> What's wrong with it?
>
> The reason I discourage using multi-line strings as comments is that
> they don't nest (which I think David mentioned earlier). If you've got a
> short multi-line-string-as-comment in the middle of a function, and then
> you try to use multi-line-string technique to comment out that entire
> function, you don't get what you want, you get a syntax error as your
> short comment is now parsed as code.
>
> (FWIW, I don't think this means Python needs a dedicated syntax for
> multi-line comments, I think multiple lines beginning with # works just
> fine.)

In which languages do multi-line comments nest? AFAIK not in the
Java/C/C++/JavaScript family.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)