Hi Guilhem, all!
To me, your question has both a style and a technical aspect.
Guilhem Bichot wrote:
> [[...]]
>
> So the proposal is merely to allow
> // this is a comment which is alone on its line
> in C++ code.
> I'm fine if we continue forbidding
> // this is
> // a multi-line
> // comment
> and require /* */ instead.
>
My technical comment on "//":
The increased use of "//" comments in C++ files raises the risk of using
them in C files, which will not be rejected by most C compilers
(including gcc) but will cause compilation failures with IBM C (which we
use on AIX and i5/os).
We have had several release builds fail because of this, it is simply
detected too late. So the build team has to fix it, push, and start a
rebuild. Considering that AIX and i5os are not our fastest platforms and
that we might not detect the failure immediately, the delay may be
significant.
I would prefer not to use "//" at all, just to avoid that it might
become a habit which then affects C files.
My style comment (includes technical reasoning):
For multi-line comments, my preference would be
/*
* the real comment
* maybe several lines
*/
so that a commented code line returned by "grep" does not look like
active code. (I have been bitten several times by this when checking
MySQL code: a variable looked like being used when in fact all use was
already turned into comments.)
However, this style differs from current MySQL conventions so I will not
pursue this myself (but would support others who feel similar).
Regards,
Jörg
--
Joerg Bruehe, MySQL Build Team, joerg.bruehe@stripped
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