Yorick User Manual

1.3.2.2 Comments

There are two ways to insert comments into a Yorick program. These are the C style /* ... */ and the C++ style //:

// C++ style comments begin with // (anywhere on a line)
// and end at the end of that line.

E = m*c^2;  /* C style comments begin with slash-star, and
               do not end until start-slash, even if that
               is several lines later.  */
/* C style comments need not annotate a single line.
 * You should pick a comment style which makes your
 * code attractive and easy to read.  */

F = m*a;         // Here is another C++ style comment...
divE = 4*pi*rho; /* ... and a final C style comment. */

I strongly recommend C++ style comments when you “comment out” a sequence of Yorick statements. C style comments do not nest properly, so you can’t comment out a series of lines which contain comments:

/*
E = m*c^2;   /* ERROR -- this ends the outer comment --> */
F = m*a
*/ <-- then this causes a syntax error

The C++ style not only works correctly; it also makes it more obvious that the lines in question are comments:

// E = m*c^2;   /* Any kind of comment could go here.  */
// F = m*a;

Yorick recognizes one special comment: If the first line of an include file begins with #!, Yorick ignores that line. This allows Yorick include scripts to be executable on UNIX systems supporting the “pound bang” convention:

#!/usr/local/bin/yorick -batch
/* If this file has execute permission, UNIX will use Yorick to
 * execute it.  The Yorick function get_argv can be used to accept
 * command line arguments (see help, get_argv).  You might want
 * to use -i instead of -batch on the first line.  Read the help
 * on process_argv and batch for more information.  */
write, "The square root of pi is", sqrt(pi);
quit;