I see. But doesn't that make the format itself ambiguous? Put another way, how can you tell the following two apart, programmatically?

pattern = the number is #8       # number

pattern = 255.257.0.0            # invalid, and BTW, this comment contains a # character

To a human (or pony) reading this, it's obvious that the comment starts on the second # in the first line, and on the first # in the second line. But how would a program tell the difference?

This is what I meant by quoting, BTW. If your format required you to write e.g.

pattern = "the number is #8"     # number

to avoid this ambiguity, you'd have to deal with quoting, but at least you'd be able to rely on the first unquoted # character on a line to actually indicate a comment.