Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Nested Comments in C -- A recent experience
Message-ID: <1990Mar11.222704.16655@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <236100027@prism> <1414@amethyst.math.arizona.edu> <1523@wacsvax.OZ> <4320@daffy.cs.wisc.edu> <TC$#8^-@masalla.fulcrum.bt.co.uk> <1990Mar11.065712.9798@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 90 22:27:04 GMT

In article <1990Mar11.065712.9798@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> crds@pyrite.som.cwru.edu (Glenn A. Emelko) writes:
>... 3 hours looking for a "bug" which turned out not to be a "bug" at all;
>rather it went undetected as a programming error BECAUSE our C compiler doesn't
>handle nested comments (like most C compilers don't)...

You mean "because our C compiler doesn't issue a warning when it sees /*
inside a comment".  C COMMENTS DO NOT NEST.  THEY NEVER HAVE.  ANY COMPILER
WHICH "HANDLES" NESTED COMMENTS IS NOT A C COMPILER.  It is legitimate to
complain about a compiler which doesn't flag /* in a comment as a possible
error, but claiming that a C compiler should "handle nested comments" is
just silly; no C compiler can do that.
-- 
MSDOS, abbrev:  Maybe SomeDay |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
an Operating System.          | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu
