NET/MASTER Network Control Language (NCL) Programmer's Guide

The Structure of an NCL Procedure
Initial NCL Procedure Development
4–4 106160 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Comments A comment is a nonexecutable statement. You can use comments to describe what an
NCL procedure does at each logical step.
Comments begin with a comment delimiter (/*) and end with a comment delimiter
(*/). (The final comment delimiter (*/) is also called a comment terminator.) The
following example shows a simple comment:
/* This is an example of a simple comment */
With one restriction, you can include any characters between the two comment
delimiters. You cannot include a comment terminator within a comment. This means
that you cannot nest comments. The following table displays the correct and incorrect
uses of comment delimiters:
What You Type Result After Comment Processing Comment
/* abc */ (blank) Correct
/* abc /* def */ (blank) Correct
/* abc */ def */ def */ Incorrect
/* abc /* def */ ghi */ ghi */ Incorrect
You can include any number of characters between the two comment delimiters
providing that the two comment delimiters are within the same source file. A file that
you want to include within the current procedure, using the %%INCLUDE compiler
directive, cannot contain a comment that does not terminate.
You can continue a comment across line boundaries providing that you close the
comment with the comment terminator before the end of the current source file. The
following example shows a comment that is more than one line in length:
/* This is an example of a comment that continues to the next
line. It spans a line boundary. */
Characters that have special meaning in a certain context, such as the the line
continuation character and the statement terminator, are not recognized inside
comments. The following example shows a comma (,) that is not recognized as a line
continuation character because it is within a comment:
/* The comma at the end of this line is not recognized as a,
line continuation character. It is part of the comment. */
The following example shows a semicolon (;) that is not recognized as a statement
termination character because it is within a comment:
/* The semicolon at the end of this line is not recognized;
as a statement termination character. It is part of the
comment. */