[R] No Comment?

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, kjetil brinchmann halvorsen wrote:

> On 12 Sep 2003 at 15:53, len vir wrote:
> 
> > Why is there no 'multiple-line comment code' in R, 
> 
> ¿Because the developers use ess and so see no need?

Mainly because S does not, and S preceded ESS and it's progenitor S-mode.

You'll find the comments in S/R are often one line and rarely more
than three.  If you want to annotate code, use a system like Sweave or 
noweb.

> Kjetil Halvorsen
> 
> > like 
> > /* 
> > in C++
> > or in
> > GAUSS
> >  */   
> >  
> > for example ?

AFAIK C++ prefers // (and /* */ is a hangover from C), and many other
languages (e.g. Fortran, Perl) have no multi-line comment device.

Many editors will allow commenting a selected block of lines, and you can
also use

if(FALSE) {
}

to comment out parts of your code.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595