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Re: Code comments extraction for documentation

Subject: Re: Code comments extraction for documentation
From: "Sandy Harris" <sandyinchina -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2006 21:32:02 +0800

John Harrington <beartiger -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:

By "comments extraction", I mean extracting comments from code (e.g.,
c++) for use in documentation (e.g., of a software developers' kit).
If there is a more standard name for this, please let me know.

The buzzphrase for this is "literate programming". Google search turns
up many references. No doubt there are some good ones.

Knuth wrote a book that started the "literate programming" movement:
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/lp.html

Has anyone on the list tackled the problem of comments extraction in a
documentation project?

1) What tool(s) did you use/recommend? Or did you roll your own?

One solution I've seen used C comments before function definitions
with an extra * in the format:

/** function furble
** computes the furble of its arguments
**/
int furble( int x, int y, int z)

A few lines of Awk or PERL will extract the comments here.
Comments using only /* ... */ or // will be ignored; not every
comment belongs in the documentation.
--
Sandy Harris
Quanzhou, Fujian, China
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References:
Code comments extraction for documentation: From: John Harrington

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