[comments] Where is the syntax for TypeScript comments documented?

Is the syntax for TypeScript comments documented anywhere?

And by any chance, does it now support the C# /// system?

You can use comments like in regular JavaScript:

1 Introduction

[...] TypeScript syntax is a superset of ECMAScript 2015 (ES2015) syntax.

2 Basic Concepts

[...] This document describes the syntactic grammar added by TypeScript [...]

Source: TypeScript Language Specification

The only two mentions of the word "comments" in the spec are:

1 Introduction

[...] TypeScript also provides to JavaScript programmers a system of optional type annotations. These type annotations are like the JSDoc comments found in the Closure system, but in TypeScript they are integrated directly into the language syntax. This integration makes the code more readable and reduces the maintenance cost of synchronizing type annotations with their corresponding variables.

11.1.1 Source Files Dependencies

[...] A comment of the form /// <reference path="..."/> adds a dependency on the source file specified in the path argument. The path is resolved relative to the directory of the containing source file.

TypeScript is a strict syntactical superset of JavaScript hence

• Single line comments start with //
• Multi-line comments start with /* and end with */

You can add information about parameters, returns, etc. as well using:

/**
* This is the foo function
* @param bar This is the bar parameter
* @returns returns a string version of bar
*/
function foo(bar: number): string {
    return bar.toString()
}

This will cause editors like VS Code to display it as the following:

Future

The TypeScript team, and other TypeScript involved teams, plan to create a standard formal TSDoc specification. The 1.0.0 draft hasn't been finalised yet: https://github.com/Microsoft/tsdoc#where-are-we-on-the-roadmap

Current

TypeScript uses JSDoc. e.g.

/** This is a description of the foo function. */
function foo() {
}

To learn jsdoc : https://jsdoc.app/

But you don't need to use the type annotation extensions in JSDoc.

You can (and should) still use other jsdoc block tags like @returns etc.

Example

Just an example. Focus on the types (not the content).

JSDoc version (notice types in docs):

/**
 * Returns the sum of a and b
 * @param {number} a
 * @param {number} b
 * @returns {number}
 */
function sum(a, b) {
    return a + b;
}

TypeScript version (notice the re-location of types):

/**
 * Takes two numbers and returns their sum
 * @param a first input to sum
 * @param b second input to sum
 * @returns sum of a and b
 */
function sum(a: number, b: number): number {
    return a + b;
}