parsing comments in scripts

[Alex Tweedly]

At 23:32 11/12/2004 -0700, Dar Scott wrote:


>On Dec 11, 2004, at 12:33 PM, Alex Tweedly wrote:
>
>>I just think it should do what it says in the docs - make all the code 
>>between that line and the
>>end myHandler be ignored / have no effect, equivalent to 
>>"block-commenting" the whole handler.
>
>I'm not comfortable with this.
>
>To do this, it would have to ignore everything from the commented out 'on' 
>or 'function' line down to the 'end', including 'local', 'global' and 
>'constant' lines.  To do this, it would have to know the line is a 
>commented out 'on' or 'function'.  To do this, it would have to look 
>inside and parse the contents of comments.  This violates the trust 
>between the compiler and me.  That which is in a comment belongs to 
>me.  And besides, what if I have a temporary first line commented out, or 
>for some reason include "on Christmas morning" in some line of a comment.

Yeah - it certainly has some difficulties. In some ways I don't care 
whether they change the docs or the app - I just don't like them disagreeing.

>It is straightforward to select the entire handler and select "Comment" 
>from the script menu.  An alternative might be to temporarily change the 
>spelling of the name.

That's what I've always done (since I didn't know about this "feature"), 
and what I intend to keep on doing - so I'll never (deliberately) use this 
feature, and hopefully I will never be affected by it.

In this case, I don't think it's good enough to change the docs to reflect 
what the code does - because the current behaviour is a trap for the 
unwary. Often, I'll use the same (local) variable names within multiple 
handlers (e.g. tLine is a favourite of mine :-)  If I were to use this 
feature, it would then change all those occurrences of tLine from 
handler-local to script-local - i.e. they are all the same variable - so 
hard-to-find bugs are all too possible.

I'd prefer if they removed the feature entirely, or as you suggested used 
"disabled" or some such keyword rather than a comment, preceding the first 
line of the handler.

-- Alex.