Re: Ways of commenting subroutines

[Lexicon]

My current commenting style, although it needs work. You'll have to excuse it's JavaScript-iness, that's all I have handy.

// ========================================================
//       COUNT OCCURRENCES (
//                          STR, // String to search through
//                          SUB  // String to search for
//                         )
// --------------------------------------------------------
//   Counts the instances of SUB in STR. Counts overlapping 
//     occurrences.  Count_Occurrences( 'rrrrr', 'rr') = 4.
// --------------------------------------------------------
function Count_Occurrences ( STR, SUB ) {
 var last   = 0;
 var count  = 0; 
 while ((last = STR.indexOf(SUB, last + 1)) > -1) { count++ }
 return count;  
}

Update: If you ever spend a year in a country where they don't speak your language, keep a spell checker handy. Alternatively, if my code is used it will only be by non-english speakers, who wouldn't know how to spell 'occurrence' anyway. ;)

-Lexicon

[grinder]

ouch! you just hit on one of my pet peeves... bad spelling.

It's "occurrence", not "occurance". Your code may be the greatest thing in the world since sliced bread, but if routine names contain spelling mistakes people are going to believe that the code contains other shoddinesses, thus you wind up needlessly damaging your reputation.

Worse, client programmers using your code are going to stumble and trip, because they're going to try and call count_occurrences and fail miserably.


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g r i n d e r