gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn ) (02/09/89)
In article <1629@goofy.megatest.UUCP> djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) writes: > But if you know what the variables are supposed to mean, then you > know what the routine *has* to do. This is a good point: practically every variable should have a well-defined meaning exhibited by an attached comment. That also suppresses the inclination to "borrow" an already-declared variable for some other purpose instead of declaring a new one. I agree that obvious algorithms don't require comments explaining them; however, frequently (at least in my case) there are non-obvious things that the code maintainer needs to know about many of the algorithms, so some explanation is in order. Also, it helps to document the general intention of pieces of the code: /* * Sort in descending order of size. */ particularly when one would have to do a fair amount of work to figure it out from uncommented code.