Comments

 

C++

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C++ language

General topics
Preprocessor Comments	Keywords Escape sequences
Flow control
Conditional execution statements
if	switch
Iteration statements (loops)
for range-for (C++11)	while do-while
Jump statements
continue - break	goto - return
Functions
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Character - String - nullptr (C++11)
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typedef declaration
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new expression	delete expression
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Basic Concepts

Comments

ASCII

Punctuation

Names and identifiers

Types

Fundamental types

Objects

Scope

Object lifetime

Storage duration and linkage

Definitions and ODR

Name lookup

Qualified name lookup

Unqualified name lookup

The as-if rule

Undefined behavior

Memory model

Multi-threaded executions and data races (C++11)

Character sets and encodings

Phases of translation

The main function

Modules (C++20)

 

Comments serve as a sort of in-code documentation. When inserted into a program, they are effectively ignored by the compiler; they are solely intended to be used as notes by the humans that read source code. Although specific documentation is not part of the C++ standard, several utilities exist that parse comments with different documentation formats.

Syntax

/* comment */	(1)
// comment	(2)

1) Often known as "C-style" or "multi-line" comments.

2) Often known as "C++-style" or "single-line" comments.

All comments are removed from the program at translation phase 3 by replacing each comment with a single whitespace character.

C-style

C-style comments are usually used to comment large blocks of text, however, they can be used to comment single lines. To insert a C-style comment, simply surround text with /* and */; this will cause the contents of the comment to be ignored by the compiler. Although it is not part of the C++ standard, /** and */ are often used to indicate documentation blocks; this is legal because the second asterisk is simply treated as part of the comment. C-style comments cannot be nested.

C++-style

C++-style comments are usually used to comment single lines, however, multiple C++-style comments can be placed together to form multi-line comments. C++-style comments tell the compiler to ignore all content between // and a new line.

Notes

Because comments are removed before the preprocessor stage, a macro cannot be used to form a comment and an unterminated C-style comment doesn't spill over from an #include'd file.

Besides commenting out, other mechanisms used for source code exclusion are

#if 0
    std::cout << "this will not be executed or even compiled\n";
#endif

and

if (false)
{
    std::cout << "this will not be executed\n";
}

Example

Run this code

#include <iostream>
 
/* C-style comments can contain
multiple lines */
/* or just one */
 
/**************
 *  you can insert any *, but
 *  you can't make comments nested
 */
 
// C++-style comments can comment one line
 
// or, they can
// be strung together
 
int main()
{
    // comments are removed before preprocessing,
    // so ABC is "1", not "1//2134", and "1 hello world"
    // will be printed
#define ABC 1//2134
    std::cout << ABC << " hello world\n";
 
    // The below code won't be run
    // return 1;
 
    // The below code will be run
    return 0;
}

Output:

1 hello world

See also

C documentation for comment