Deleted-Code.html 4.1 KB

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  57. <span id="Deleted-Code-1"></span><h3 class="section">4.3 Deleted Code</h3>
  58. <span id="index-commenting-out-code"></span>
  59. <p>If you replace or delete a part of the program but want to keep the old
  60. code around for future reference, you often cannot simply comment it
  61. out. Block comments do not nest, so the first comment inside the old
  62. code will end the commenting-out. The probable result is a flood of
  63. syntax errors.
  64. </p>
  65. <p>One way to avoid this problem is to use an always-false conditional
  66. instead. For instance, put <code>#if 0</code> before the deleted code and
  67. <code>#endif</code> after it. This works even if the code being turned
  68. off contains conditionals, but they must be entire conditionals
  69. (balanced &lsquo;<samp>#if</samp>&rsquo; and &lsquo;<samp>#endif</samp>&rsquo;).
  70. </p>
  71. <p>Some people use <code>#ifdef notdef</code> instead. This is risky, because
  72. <code>notdef</code> might be accidentally defined as a macro, and then the
  73. conditional would succeed. <code>#if 0</code> can be counted on to fail.
  74. </p>
  75. <p>Do not use <code>#if 0</code> for comments which are not C code. Use a real
  76. comment, instead. The interior of <code>#if 0</code> must consist of complete
  77. tokens; in particular, single-quote characters must balance. Comments
  78. often contain unbalanced single-quote characters (known in English as
  79. apostrophes). These confuse <code>#if 0</code>. They don&rsquo;t confuse
  80. &lsquo;<samp>/*</samp>&rsquo;.
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