Extremely stupid question

lijepdan

Hi guys!

I started learning PHP, and I downloaded php bb3 forum code and I want to figure out how does it work.
I'm sorry for wasting you time but I'm stuck at the very begging of it.
What does this peace of code means

<?php
/**
*
* @package phpBB3
* @version $Id$
* @copyright (c) 2005 phpBB Group
* @license http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php GNU Public License
*
*/

/**
*/

/**
* @ignore
*/

Are these comments, why are they starting with /** and not with /, why so many symbols (each row has one) and what does this symbol @ mean?
Cheers

bradgrafelman

Welcome to PHPBuilder! When posting PHP code, please use the board's [noparse]

..

[/noparse] bbcode tags as they make your code much easier to read and analyze.

lijepdan;11037899 wrote:
What does this peace of code means

It means absolutely nothing; the code snippet you posted contained only comments and no actual PHP code.

lijepdan;11037899 wrote:
Are these comments

Yes.

lijepdan;11037899 wrote:
why are they starting with /** and not with /*

I suspect because the documentation software (e.g. phpDocumentor) expects the former and not the latter (allowing you to use normal multi-line comments without them being misinterpreted by the documentation software).

lijepdan;11037899 wrote:
why so many * symbols (each row has one)

Same as above - it's probably what the software expects. That, and it looks pretty.

lijepdan;11037899 wrote:
and what does this symbol @ mean?

That depends. In the context of a comment, it means nothing at all to PHP. To other software that manually parses comments... it means whatever the creators of that software intended it to mean. For example, in phpDocumentor, it denotes the start of a tag.

In the context of actual PHP code, it could be the operator used to suppress errors (see [man]operators.errorcontrol[/man]).

NogDog

Yeah, the "/" starts a block comment and the first occurrence of "/" ends it. anything in between -- including another "*" immediately after the start of the comment -- is ignored by the PHP parser.

The specific format used for that comment block, with that additional "*" and the ones on each following line, is specific to the phpdocumentor tool Brad mentioned, which was based on the similar tool developed for Java. If used appropriately, it allows you to auto-generate documentation about your code, and many of the better code editors understand it and can provide some of its information in the editing window about things like function parameters. The latter is the main reason I use it in every non-trivial piece of code I write. But as I said, PHP itself doesn't care about any of that, just the opening and closing comment delimiters. (Note that "//" or "#" can be used to make everything that follows it until the next line break a comment -- with all the cool people preferring to use "//".)

traq

NogDog;11037925 wrote:
… with all the cool people preferring to use "//"

# I'm not cool anymore? : (

NogDog

traq;11037927 wrote:
# I'm not cool anymore? : (

// were you ever?

/**
 * @author NogDog
 * I know I wasn't
 */

traq

I thought so. I really did…

Actually, I started using # comments only recently, and only when I needed a comment to "stick out" more than usual —e.g., something I wasn't finished/satisfied with, or comments (feedback) on someone else's code.

NogDog

traq;11037935 wrote:
I thought so. I really did…

Actually, I started using # comments only recently, and only when I needed a comment to "stick out" more than usual —e.g., something I wasn't finished/satisfied with, or comments (feedback) on someone else's code.

/**
 * @todo I suppose that is a lot easier to type than this :)
 */

// PS: I just get some weird geek entertainment out of using code comments to make forum comments
$sql = <<<EOD
-- sort of a self-referential thing, perhaps?
EOD;

traq

…very meta, yes

johanafm

/*
 * # is the new //
 */

NogDog

This is all giving me a crazy idea to code something that would be the 4':33" of PHP coding, making use of all sorts of comments (including HTML comments, CSS comments, etc.).

Yes, I'm a sick puppy sometimes.

dalecosp

Exactly how many lines of HTML, CSS, PHP, and JS would you need to produce 4'33" of null output? 😃

dalecosp

Might be fun to build it as a team! I'll start:

<?php
/********************************************************
*                                                        *
 *    Four point three three kilobytes                  *
*                                                        *
 *       For server and client                          *
*                                                        *
 *       by the PHPBuilder.com forum crew               *
*                                                        *
*********************************************************/

NogDog

// I think I'd put the time delay on the client. :)

<script type='text/javascript'>
/*
 * What I wish I were doing right now
 * @return boolean
 */
function sleep()
{
	// don't you wish JavaScript had a simple built-in sleep() function?
	return setTimeout(nuttinhoney, ((4 * 60) + 33) * 1000);
}
/**
 * My other favorite thing to do
 * @return boolean
 */
function nuttinhoney()
{
	// I ain't gonna do nuttin'
	return alert("Wow! You sure are patient.");
}
</script>

# PS: The above is untested, and I'm not particularly famous for my JS skills,
# so there is not guarantee it actually works.

dalecosp

Ooh, parse error! I didn't close the PHP tag before you started the JS code.

We're currently at 1.1k. Forgive me tightening up whitespace ... I thought we were getting too big too fast (but was wrong about that).

4point33KB.txt

Derokorian

Dale, you now have output, because your closing PHP tag is before nogdog's php comment! (which is also outside script tags)

dalecosp

Gee, what would we do without a parser like you?

(Sounds like a song title...)

Next poster can fix that small error, I'm sure....

sneakyimp

I thought I remembered hearing that comments starting with # were deprecated, but I guess that only applies to INI files.

lijepdan

/* These usual comments are enough for me  

*/
//thanks folks

cretaceous

/*
Should really be exactly 273 lines of code - Cage's joke on absolute.. yes you know
Then it needs a web page that outputs invisible returns every 4,33
*/

Weedpacket

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