Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 19:12:01 -0500, Peter Hansen wrote: > > >>john peter wrote: >> >>>is there a similar mechanism in python, other than prefixing >>>the '#' character to the start of each statement i do not >>>want to execute (which gets old very quickly if one needs to >>>comment and uncomment several statements a couple of >>>times while "playing around with code" say during initial design)? >> >>In addition to the approach Paul has suggested, you should also consider >>using a better editor, as most decent editors should have some kind of >>"block comment/uncomment" feature that prevents that operation from >>getting old very quickly... >> >>Scite, for example, lets me selected a block and hit Ctrl-Q to either >>comment or uncomment the block. > > > I see the developers of Scite are either newbies to GUI programming, or > they operate in a world of their own. Ctrl-Q is reserved for Quit (or > Exit) in every GUI API I know of. > I don't think this is common enough to regard as any kind of de facto standard.
Just to give two further counterexamples, neither TextPad nor Notepad action a Ctrl/Q in that way. Perhaps I'm just using the wrong operating system? > > >>(It does this by prefixing each line >>with #~ instead of just #, which allows it to detect when a line is >>already so commented and reverse the operation.) > > > It is *easy* to detect when a line is already commented. It starts with a > #. The ~ is superfluous. > > Commenting and uncommenting should be two different commands: the whole > point of nested comments is that it allows you to comment a block of text > which may already contain comments. Having one command do both commenting > and uncommenting according to the presence or absence of semantic clues in > the text is a recipe for failure ("No you stupid computer, I want to > COMMENT that block, not uncomment it!!!"). > > Imagine if your text editor used cntl-C for both copy and paste, somehow > guessing whether you wanted to copy selected text or paste over it > according to some subtle clue in the text itself. Wouldn't that be fun? > I agree that's a less-than-sensible feature implementation. regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list