cpp/comment

Comments serve as a sort of in-code documentation. When inserted into a program, they are effectively ignored by the compiler; they are solely intended to be used as notes by the humans that read source code. Although specific documentation is not part of the C++ standard, several utilities exist that parse comments with different documentation formats.

Syntax
@1@ Often known as "C-style" or "multi-line" comments. @2@ Often known as "C++-style" or "single-line" comments.

All comments are removed from the program at translation phase 3 by replacing each comment with a single whitespace character.

C-style
C-style comments are usually used to comment large blocks of text, however, they can be used to comment single lines. To insert a C-style comment, simply surround text with and ; this will cause the contents of the comment to be ignored by the compiler. Although it is not part of the C++ standard, and  are often used to indicate documentation blocks; this is legal because the second asterisk is simply treated as part of the comment. C-style comments cannot be nested.

C++-style
C++-style comments are usually used to comment single lines, however, multiple C++-style comments can be placed together to form multi-line comments. C++-style comments tell the compiler to ignore all content between and a new line.