Comments
Comments
Syntactically, comments in C++ can be accomplished in two ways:
- Single line comments are prefaced by
//
and end at the end of the line they are placed on - Multi-line comments are placed between
/*
and*/
and can span multiple lines
// This is a single line comment
This is not a comment // but this is
cout << "Hi!" << endl; // This is a comment but the cout statement is not a comment
/* This is also technically a single line comment but using the multi-line comment format */
/* Everything
in
here
is a comment */
cout << "Hi!" << endl; // This is a single line
cout << "Hi!" << endl; // comment format but
cout << "Hi!" << endl; // spanning over
cout << "Hi!" << endl; // multiple lines.
cout << "Hi 1" << endl; /* This multi-line comment actually
cout << "Hi 2" << endl; ends up removing the last three
cout << "Hi 3" << endl; cout statements and therefore
cout << "Hi 4" << endl; only "Hi 1" will be displayed. */
It is common to use comments:
- At the top of your source code to provide your name, the class and section, and a description of what the program does
- Throughout the code when necessary to explain functions and particularly complicated algorithms
- When trying to leave out code because it's partially written or buggy -- commonly called commenting out the code