Block Comments in a Shell Script

Question

Is there a simple way to comment out a block of code in a shell script

User · Answer

I like a single line open and close   if      then                    fi       The      helps me easily find the start and end to the block comment   I can stick a number after the      if I ve got a bunch of them   To turn off the comment  I just stick a  1  in the         I also avoid some issues I ve had with single-quotes in the commented  block

User · Answer

You could use Vi Vim s Visual Block mode which is designed for stuff like this    Ctrl-V   Highlight first element in rows you want commented   Shift-i       esc     Uncomment would be     Ctrl-V   Highlight   s   d   l     This is vi s interactive way of doing this sort of thing rather than counting or reading line numbers   Lastly  in Gvim you use ctrl-q to get into Visual Block mode rather than ctrl-v  because that s the shortcut for paste

User · Answer

In all honesty  why so much overengineering     I consider it really a bad practice to write active code for generating passive code   My solution  most editors have block select mode  Just use it to add   to all lines you want to comment out  What s the big deal     Notepad example   To create  Alt - mousedrag down  press     To delete  Alt-mousedrag down  shift-right arrow  delete

User · Answer

if you can dodge the single quotes        blah blah comment

User · Answer

A variation on the here-doc trick in the accepted answer by sunny256 is to use the Perl keywords for comments  If your comments are actually some sort of documentation  you can then start using the Perl syntax inside the commented block  which allows you to print it out nicely formatted  convert it to a man-page  etc   As far as the shell is concerned  you only need to replace  END  with   cut    echo  before comment     lt  lt   cut   pod   head1 NAME    podtest sh - Example shell script with embedded POD documentation  etc    cut echo  after comment     Found on  Embedding documentation in shell script

User · Answer

Another mode is  If your editor HAS NO BLOCK comment option    Open a second instance of the editor  for example File  New File     From THE PREVIOUS file you are working on  select ONLY THE PART YOU WANT COMMENT Copy and paste it in the window of the new temporary file    Open the Edit menu  select REPLACE and input as string to be replaced   n  input as replace string    n   press the button  replace ALL    DONE  it WORKS with ANY editor

User · Answer

In bash      bin bash echo before comment    lt  lt  END  bla bla blurfl END echo after comment   The   and   around the END delimiter are important  otherwise things inside the block like for example   command  will be parsed and executed   For an explanation  see this and this question

User · Answer

Use     to open and   to close   For example       This is a very neat comment in bash     This is from Vegas s example found here

User · Answer

In Vim    go to first line of block you want to comment shift-V  enter visual mode   up down highlight lines in block execute the following on selection  s      the command will look like this        lt    gt s      hit enter   e g   shift-V jjj  s      lt enter gt

User · Answer

There is no block comment on shell script    Using vi  yes  vi  you can easily comment from line n to m   lt ESC gt   10 100s         that reads  from line 10 to 100 substitute line start     with a   sign    and un comment with    lt ESC gt   10 100s         that reads  from line 10 to 100 substitute line start     followed by    with noting       vi is almost universal anywhere where there is  bin sh

User · Answer

The following should work for sh bash  ksh and zsh   The blocks of code to be commented can be put inside BEGINCOMMENT and ENDCOMMENT     -z  BASH      shopt -s expand aliases alias BEGINCOMMENT  if      then  alias ENDCOMMENT  fi   BEGINCOMMENT   echo  This line appears in a commented block    echo  And this one too   ENDCOMMENT  echo  This is outside the commented block    Executing the above code would result in   This is outside the commented block     In order to uncomment the code blocks thus commented  say  alias BEGINCOMMENT  if     then    instead of  alias BEGINCOMMENT  if      then    in the example above

User · Answer

You can use   if   1 -eq 0    then   echo  The code that you want commented out goes here     echo  This echo statement will not be called   fi

[shell] Block Comments in a Shell Script

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