PPWIZARD is a free preprocessor for HTML, REXX, Visual Basic or any text files.

Line Comments

By default the commenting character is ';'. If a line begins with this character then it is ignored.

The line comment character can be modified with the LineComment option or for the odd one of two characters starting a line you can use the "<?SemiColon>" code if required.

InLine Comments

If the line contains the line comment character doubled up (as in ;;) then everything after the last occurance of this string is considered to be an inline comment and is removed.

You could add ';;' to the end of a line so that an earlier occurance and everything following does not get removed. You can also use the "<?SemiColon>" code if required.

Note that if the line being dropped is in the middle of a set of continued lines then the line continuation characters at the end (or not at the end) of the dropped line are not ignored.

Note that a line starting with ";;" is not treated as a line comment but an inline comment, this does not usually make any difference however it will pass through a blank line if you are using the "LeaveBlankLines" option!

Commenting Blocks of Lines

The easiest way to comment out multiple lines at one time is to use the "#ifdef" command to check for a name that you will ensure never exists, such as in the following example:

    ;--- This is a line comment ---
    #define Highlight <B>{$Text}</B>   ;;Comment here
    
    #ifdef xxxx
    1st line commented out ;;Inline Comment here
    2nd line commented out
    3rd line commented out
    #endif
    
    Another line line ;;<-Want this    ;;This will be removed
    

Note that if instead of "xxxx" you used something like "MY_DEBUG" you could then use /define to define this when you wanted to enable debugging and you could then selectively output "debug" information.

PPWIZARD Manual

Thursday January 17 2002 at 6:27pm