[Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Richard Jones]

Is there a deep reason why the compiler is fussed by unmatched quotes
appearing in comments, ie: (* " *) ?

I have a problem where tuareg-mode is getting confused by a quote
character, in fact in this line:

 let chars = ['\\';'/';':';'*';'\'';'"'] in

and I can fix tuareg-mode by adding (* " *) at the end of the line,
but then the compiler barfs. So the only way to work around the
tuareg-mode bug would seem to be to actually alter the code itself,
which is not what I want to do.

It seems better all round if the compiler treated comments as
comments, ie. ignoring them.

Rich.

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Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Kim Nguyen]

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On Wed, 17 Dec 2003 15:22:32 +0000
Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:

> 
> Is there a deep reason why the compiler is fussed by unmatched quotes
> appearing in comments, ie: (* " *) ?

This seems necessary to ensure that any piece of code can easily be commented out :

(* This is a valid comment

let print_close_comment () = print_string "*)" <-- the comment does not end here.

*)

So the comment part of the  lexer needs to analyse strings as well to igonre any "*)" character sequence within a
string. And therefore, it fails when a string is unterminated.

See http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/FAQ_EXPERT-eng.html#commentaire

IMHO, the bug should be corrected in tuareg-mode (if possible).

Cheers,

Kim.

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Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Richard Jones]

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I've had a few replies along the lines that "(*" or "*)" is valid
code, and hence all this quoting comments stuff is justified.  I have
to say that writing such code is amazingly rare (perhaps only compiler
writers will write this, and then only once in their lives), whereas
I've encountered the problems with quotes in comments routinely since
I started using OCaml.  I doubt I'm alone in this.  I actually have
a small collection of programs now which have lines like this:

  (* ... some comment which contains an odd number of quotes ...

  [Keep OCaml compiler happy -->] " *)

I think the behaviour is counter-intuitive, and should be classified
as a bug, along with the other annoyance of being unable to write
let f = printf "** %i" and have it do what you expect.

Rich.

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Richard Jones. http://www.annexia.org/ http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/ - improving website return on investment
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Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[William Lovas]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 05:02:31PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> [...] I doubt I'm alone in this.  I actually have
> a small collection of programs now which have lines like this:
> 
>   (* ... some comment which contains an odd number of quotes ...
> 
>   [Keep OCaml compiler happy -->] " *)
> 
> I think the behaviour is counter-intuitive, and should be classified
> as a bug, [...]

Funny, i always found the opposite behavior to be the more counter-
intuitive of the two.  (And if you want C/Java behavior, you know
where to get it.)

What circumstances lead you to produce comments that contain an odd
number of quotes?

William

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Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Dustin Sallings]

On Dec 17, 2003, at 15:09, William Lovas wrote:

> What circumstances lead you to produce comments that contain an odd
> number of quotes?

	I've had to do that in the past to make vim's syntax highlighting 
happy.

--
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|    Key fingerprint =  87 02 57 08 02 D0 DA D6  C8 0F 3E 65 51 98 D8 BE
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Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Hendrik Tews]

Richard Jones writes:
   
   I have a problem where tuareg-mode is getting confused by a quote
   character, in fact in this line:
   
    let chars = ['\\';'/';':';'*';'\'';'"'] in

What about adding this comment:
			(* help tuareg fontification '"' *)
?

Bye,

Hendrik

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Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* " *)

[Xavier Leroy]

> I have a problem where tuareg-mode is getting confused by a quote
> character, in fact in this line:
> 
>  let chars = ['\\';'/';':';'*';'\'';'"'] in
> 
> and I can fix tuareg-mode by adding (* " *) at the end of the line,
> but then the compiler barfs.

I suggest writing '\"' instead of '"'.  It means the same thing,
but Emacs fontification code seems to understand that \" isn't a
string delimiter.

- Xavier Leroy

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