★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://wdvl.com/Authoring/Scripting/Tutorial/java_comments.html

Comments

Selena Sol

Fundamental Programming Standards

Just as we saw in Perl, Java uses the standard syntax for defining the parts of a program. For example, all commands are ended with a semicolon(;)
```
	int i = 5;
```
Similarly, all blocks of code are defined by curly braces such as in the following example:
```
if (i <10)
  {
  System.out.println("i is less than 5);
  }
```
This type of programming should be very familiar for you from yesterday.

Comments

Just as you could use the number sign (#) to let the Perl interpreter know that a line in the code was a comment, you can specify comments in Java.
Actually, there are several ways to denote comments in Java.
For single line comments, you can use the "//" notation. For example, consider the following code:
```
		// Initialize variables...
int age = 28;	// Declare and initialize age
```
Single line comments can be defined on the same line as your code or on their own line

To specify multiline comments, however, you will use the "/*" and "*/" combination such as in the following example:

/*
This is a sample class which is used to demonstrate
the use of multi-line comments.  it was written by
Selena Sol for the Web Programming Tutorial
*/

	// Define an Example class with a single
        // main() method which will print out
        // "Hello Cyberspace!" to standard output.

public class Example
  {
  public static void main(String[] args)
    {
    System.out.println("Hello Cyberspace!");
    }
  }

As you can see, if you use the "//" notation and your comment spans multiple lines, you must begin each new line with a "//" combination.

Finally, if you are writing comments which should be included as part of a javadoc document, you should use the "/**" "*/" combination such as in the following example:

/*
This is a sample class which is used to demonstrate
the use of multi-line comments.  it was written by
Selena Sol for the Web Programming Tutorial.  This comment
does not appear in the java documentation
*/

	/** 
        Define an Example class with a single
        main() method which will print out
        "Hello Cyberspace!" to standard output.
        This comment appears in the javadoc.
        */

public class Example
  {
  public static void main(String[] args)
    {
    System.out.println("Hello Cyberspace!");
    }
  }