And see On comments for a long discussion between BrowserUK and I about the meaning and value of comments. BrowserUK is strictly a minimalist (or perhaps a zeroist), and feels comments only get in the way, and I'm a semi-maximalist, who feels that comments should be there to clarify intent, point out pitfalls, and explain complex code to the reader. That said, I too agree that comments which simply mirror the code are not needed.

In the example noted, the comment is not needed; if there were some specific limitation on what the return value should be or a special case that might occur, a comment would be a good idea. That's a marginal case and might or might not be better put in the POD for the subroutine (which should also be there); it would depend on the context. In an internal-use-only subroutine that was not part of a documented external interface, I'd use a comment; in a published, intended-for-use-without-reading-the-code situation, I'd put it in the POD.

In reply to Re^2: How do I prototype a function with a varying number of arguments? by pemungkah
in thread How do I prototype a function with a varying number of arguments? by lyapunov

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