Hi Laura
On Dec 9, 2007 6:04 PM, Laura Creighton <lac@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I think one of the most useful places to write comments -- and one
which I think is rarely done -- is
# hack hack hack ! this function should really do XXX instead of YYY
# that it does now
This is a great use of comments.
In open source software, there is a casual convention like:
# XXX simplify the logic of this function
. In some games, notably *angband, this evolves into
# XXX hack: force a 'good' depth.
(in distinction from XXX - 'XXX' just meaning code that does not give
you a good feeling about how it does things, whereas 'XXX hack' is
meaning something that you know is inappropriate to do but currently
works.)
That way, when you come across it later, you can be sure that
this is code you meant to clean up and never got around to, rather
than code that was done in this strange way on purpose.
Laura