- C++ Gotchas<P dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><A href="http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/">Raymond Chen</A> mentioned this book, here's a <A href="http://safari.oreilly.com/JVXSL.asp?x=1&mode=section&sortKey=rank&sortOrder=desc&view=book&xmlid=0-321-12518-5&open=false&g=&srchText=&code=&h=&m=&l=1&catid=&s=1&b=1&f=1&t=1&c=1&u=1&r=&o=1">Safari</A> link. I just started reading it but so far it's all good stuff. Here's an example:</P>
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<P class=docText><EM>A particularly odious practice is that of inserting change logs as comments at the head or tail of source code files:</EM></P><PRE><EM></EM></PRE><PRE><EM><SPAN class=docEmphMark>/* 6/17/02 SCD fixed the gaforniflat bug */</SPAN>
</EM></PRE>
<P class=docText><EM>Is this useful information, or is the maintainer just bragging? This comment is unlikely to be of any use whatever within a week or two of its insertion, but it will hang on grimly for years, distracting generations of maintainers. A much better alternative is to cede these commenting tasks to your version control software; a C++ source code file is no place to leave a laundry list.</EM></P></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P class=docText dir=ltr>This is from Gotcha #1: Excessive Commenting.</P>
<P class=docText dir=ltr> </P>Thu, 01 Sep 2005 19:17:06 GMT