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<P><FONT SIZE="5">6.5 When Comments are Bad</FONT><BR>
<P>In the "good old days" of
small machine memories and interpreted BASIC,
programmers would eliminate the "<TT>REM</TT>"
statements (comments) from their
BASIC programs so as to save space and increase execution
speed. Whilst this was obviously an appalling programming
practice, the small memories and slow microprocessors often
made this tempting, if not necessary.
<P>Thankfully, times have changed since then, and most
code is now compiled rather than interpreted. However, from
time to time one still runs into an environment or
situation, or special-purpose language, where comments are
either unavailable (no comment feature) or undesirable. Here
FunnelWeb can be used to fully document the code without
resulting in any comments in the final code at all. For
example:
<P> <UL>
<LI> Comments in frequently used <SAMP>.h</SAMP> header
files in C programs can have a
significant impact on compilation speed. Often such header
files are fairly cryptic and really ought to be well
commented, but their authors are reluctant to.
<LI> Comments are undesirable in
PostScript header files that must be
transferred repeatedly along communications channels
(e.g. the Apple Macintosh LaserWriter header file).
<LI> Interpreted programs in embedded systems.
<LI> Hand written machine code in hex dump form could be
commented.
<LI> A programmer may wish to annotate a text data file
containing lists of numbers that is to be fed into a
statistical program that does not provide any comment
facility for its input file.
</UL>
<P>In all these situations, FunnelWeb allows full
integrated documentation without any impact on the final
code.
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