Standardization questions --

[decot]

A solution to this problem is suggested by the comment style of Ada, which
is that portions of lines beginning with '--' are ignored.  Since
this would be rather unacceptable in C, and we want the preprocessor to
handle it, the rule that leaps to mind is:

    Lines or portions of lines beginning with '##' are ignored, except
    within single or double quotes, or within the /* other kind of */ comment.
    This rule applies even if the remainder of the line contains '/*'.

Voila!  No problems with nesting, and it's always immediately obvious whether
a line is commented out, if you use consistently use only ## in new programs.
This also has the advantage that all existing correct sources would remain
correct, which is not true under comment nesting.

Dave Decot  hpda!decot