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<message 
  url="2003/12/6dcb88a45064c773184902fea7270427"
  from="Richard Jones &lt;rich@a...&gt;"
  author="Richard Jones"
  date="2003-12-17T17:02:34"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)"
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<thread subject="[Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
<msg 
  url="2003/12/0dc06cbcddbce82c12e07d06022f6e58"
  from="Richard Jones &lt;rich@a...&gt;"
  author="Richard Jones"
  date="2003-12-17T15:22:35"
  subject="[Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
<msg 
  url="2003/12/2ef4b3a5e13a73565bbf4f5ca49ed9a3"
  from="Kim Nguyen &lt;nguyen@b...&gt;"
  author="Kim Nguyen"
  date="2003-12-17T15:51:49"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
<msg 
  url="2003/12/6dcb88a45064c773184902fea7270427"
  from="Richard Jones &lt;rich@a...&gt;"
  author="Richard Jones"
  date="2003-12-17T17:02:34"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
<msg 
  url="2003/12/051dd5d9de0b271db8eba6ff8832e844"
  from="William Lovas &lt;wlovas@s...&gt;"
  author="William Lovas"
  date="2003-12-17T23:09:58"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
<msg 
  url="2003/12/138e4f5860bc4bf7463033288393b8fc"
  from="Dustin Sallings &lt;dustin@s...&gt;"
  author="Dustin Sallings"
  date="2003-12-18T03:48:14"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
</msg>
</msg>
</msg>
</msg>
<msg 
  url="2003/12/022975ccda0facd55d5ed5f392e0139a"
  from="Hendrik Tews &lt;tews@t...&gt;"
  author="Hendrik Tews"
  date="2003-12-18T13:52:52"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
</msg>
<msg 
  url="2003/12/c475afa6b1d6f2645b0abfa89a4ca77c"
  from="Xavier Leroy &lt;xavier.leroy@i...&gt;"
  author="Xavier Leroy"
  date="2003-12-18T17:06:00"
  subject="Re: [Caml-list] Quotes in comments: (* &quot; *)">
</msg>
</msg>
</thread>

<contents>
I've had a few replies along the lines that "(*" or "*)" is valid
code, and hence all this quoting comments stuff is justified.  I have
to say that writing such code is amazingly rare (perhaps only compiler
writers will write this, and then only once in their lives), whereas
I've encountered the problems with quotes in comments routinely since
I started using OCaml.  I doubt I'm alone in this.  I actually have
a small collection of programs now which have lines like this:

  (* ... some comment which contains an odd number of quotes ...

  [Keep OCaml compiler happy --&gt;] " *)

I think the behaviour is counter-intuitive, and should be classified
as a bug, along with the other annoyance of being unable to write
let f = printf "** %i" and have it do what you expect.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones. http://www.annexia.org/ http://freshmeat.net/users/rwmj
Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/ - improving website return on investment
Learning Objective CAML for C, C++, Perl and Java programmers:
http://www.merjis.com/richj/computers/ocaml/tutorial/
</contents>

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