The /* character combination introduces a comment and
the */ character combination ends a comment, except
within a character constant or string literal.
Comments cannot be nested; once a comment is started, the compiler
treats the first occurrence of */ as the end of the
comment.
To comment out sections of code, avoid using the /*
and */ sequences. Using the /* and
*/ sequences works only for code sections containing
no comments, because comments do not nest. A better method is
to use the #if and #endif preprocessor
directives, as in the following example:
#if 0 /* This code is excluded from execution because ... */ code_to_be_excluded (); #endif
See Chapter 8 for more
information on the preprocessing directives #if and
#endif .
Comments cannot span source files. Within a source file, comments can be of any length and are interpreted as white space by both the compiler and the preprocessor.