[PATCH 2/2] default_options: Update the comments

[Michael Witten]

On Sat, 15 Jul 2017 20:46:02 -0000, Michael Witten wrote:

> Now the comments reflect the way the code works; no code
> has been changed.
>
> In the process of updating the comments, they have also been
> copy edited; notably, old-style C comments (/**/) have been
> replaced with new-style, one-line C++ comments (//).
>
> For the record, `packet.c' is another file that has already
> been using the new-style C++ comments, so there shouldn't
> be an existing issue with old compilers.

Alas, I stumbled across this commit:

    commit de1deaf0bde9c0e67932420117caeb390f8ead98
    Author: Matt Johnston <matt at ucc.asn.au>
    Date:   Thu Nov 14 22:03:30 2013 +0800

        use oldstyle comments

Is there any particular reason why you'd still insist on using
them?

Personally, I was motivated by 2 reasons to switch these comments
to the new-style:

  * Practical

    While editing the comments, I had inadvertantly deleted one
    of the comment closers (`*/'). The results were that gcc
    emitted some very confusing errors; why not just avoid
    this whole issue by using comments that are guaranteed to
    end at a newline?

  * Aesthetic

    I find the old-style comments ugly; the asterisk is a bit
    jarring. Also, free-flowing prose looks funny, so comments
    that are composed of multiple lines tend to be written so
    that each line is prefixed with an asterisk, which is just
    as noisy as new-style comments, anyway.

Again, I'd note that existing code (`packet.c') has been using
the new-style comments since early 2015:

  $ git blame -L335,337 packet.c
  57946393 (Matt Johnston 2015-03-01 00:57:21 +0800 335)          //ses.payload = buf_new(len);
  57946393 (Matt Johnston 2015-03-01 00:57:21 +0800 336)          //memcpy(ses.payload->data, buf_getptr(ses.readbuf, len), len);
  57946393 (Matt Johnston 2015-03-01 00:57:21 +0800 337)          //buf_incrlen(ses.payload, len);

Sincerely,
Michael Witten