[R] Block comment?

Jeff Newmiller jdnewmil at dcn.davis.ca.us
Sat Sep 2 17:40:55 CEST 2017


I agree, since one reason for block commenting is to include syntactically-invalid information (such as broken code) in the source code.

However, block commenting is not wholly a good thing, as both the R parser and human coders often find it challenging to identify where the end of the block is, making it difficult to tell whether you are looking at live code or comments.  A good editor can add/remove comment marks to "blocks" of lines of code, relieving the programmer of tedium while maintaining clarity about which lines are active or not.

Block commenting is also a bit of a cultural thing, like using or avoiding tab characters in code, or vi-vs-emacs... it is hard to change people's minds about it, and potentially inflammatory to try. I think it is safe to say that the designers of R were aware of block commenting and consciously chose to not include it in the language.
-- 
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.

On September 2, 2017 7:54:18 AM PDT, "Suzen, Mehmet" <msuzen at gmail.com> wrote:
>AFAIK block comment is not possible
>it needs to be implemented in R interpreter and defined in the
>parser.'If' solution is not elegant.
>
>On 2 September 2017 at 14:09, Uwe Ligges
><ligges at statistik.tu-dortmund.de> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 02.09.2017 11:40, Christian wrote:
>>>
>>> I consider it quite worth while to introduce into R syntax a
>nestable
>>> block comment like
>>>
>>> #{
>>> <block of code>
>>> }#
>>
>>
>> if(FALSE){
>> <block of code>
>> }
>>
>> Best,
>> Uwe Ligges
>>
>>
>>> It would make documentation more easily manageable and lucid.
>>> Is there considerable need for this.
>>>
>>> Please, comment on this.
>>> How about R core?
>>>
>>> Christian
>>
>>
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>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see
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>PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.



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