Linus Torvalds In Sweary Rant About Punctuation In Kernel Comments (theregister.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register: Linus Torvalds has unleashed a sweary rant on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, labelling some members "brain-damaged" for their preferred method of punctuating comments. "Can we please get rid of the brain-damaged stupid networking comment syntax style, PLEASE?" the Linux Lord asked last Friday. "If the networking people cannot handle the pure awesomeness that is a balanced and symmetric traditional multi-line C style comments, then instead of the disgusting unbalanced crap that you guys use now, please just go all the way to the C++ mode."Torvalds despises the following two comment-punctuation styles (with his comments):/* This is disgusting drug-induced
* crap, and should die
*/ and:/* This is also very nasty
* and visually unbalanced */Torvalds prefers the following two styles:/* This is a comment */ and:/*
* This is also a comment, but it can now be cleanly
* split over multiple lines
*/

Comments

Re:please just go all the way to the C++ mode

[tlhIngan]

Am I the only one who wishes languages had different semantics for disabling code versus actual comments? Sometimes it's nice to have, plus it helps avoid the issue of having a block of code with a /* */ comment in it, then putting another /* */ around that block of code to disable it, only to find out that the first */ closed the outer comment.

C does this quite well.

Use

//

and

/* */

for textual comments.

Use

#if 0
....
#endif

for code comments.

Bonus is many editors recognize the #If 0 idiom and automatically block-comment the code out!

And the preprocessor is self-balancing, so every #if must have a corresponding #endif making it ideal for commenting out blocks of code.