Re: [PATCH] CONFIG_* In Comments Considered Harmful

[Matthew Wilcox <willy@debian.org>]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2003 at 04:42:23PM +0200, Jörn Engel wrote:
> On Wed, 1 October 2003 10:29:55 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> > On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 15:19:52 BST, Dave Jones said:
> > 
> > > Maybe it should be taught to parse comments? There are zillions of
> > > #endif /* CONFIG_FOO */
> > > braces in the tree. Why is this one special ?
> > 
> > I think it's because it looked like:
> > 
> > #ifdef CONFIG_FOO
> > ....
> > #endif /* CONFIG_FOO or CONFIG_BAR */
> > 
> > and it concluded there was a dependency on BAR.
> 
> Or rather like this:
> 
> #ifdef CONFIG_FOO
> ...
> #endif /* CONFIG_FO */
> 
> Problem is that we humans correct the type before it even reaches our
> conciousness.  Machines don't do that yet.

But it used to look like

#ifdef BAR || BAZ
...
#endif /* BAR || BAZ */

now it looks like

#ifdef BAZ
...
#endif /* BAR || BAZ */

if you can't trust people to keep comments up to date, delete the comments.
No comments are better than wrong comments.

Remember the classic?

/* Keep these two variables together */
int bar;

-- 
"It's not Hollywood.  War is real, war is primarily not about defeat or
victory, it is about death.  I've seen thousands and thousands of dead bodies.
Do you think I want to have an academic debate on this subject?" -- Robert Fisk