Comments help you, and anyone who examines the program in the future, to understand the logic of the program and the context and meaning of individual statements. Comments explain how statements work and why they are used. They are ignored by the ESL compiler.

Every comment must begin with a number sign (#) - the ESL comment character. All text from the comment character to the end of the line is part of the comment, even quotation marks and additional number signs. Here is a full comment line:

 

# This program interfaces a "C" application.

 

A comment line cannot run over to the next line without another comment character. In the following example, the first line is a valid comment line, but the second line will be compiled as ESL code and will produce an error message:

 

# This program interfaces

a C application.

 

The comment character need not appear at the beginning of a line. You can treat the right-hand portion of a line as a comment area. For example:

 

key Help at position 100 100    # See code for

    box 50 50                   # "response to

    move 10 10                  # Help"

    text center "Help"

 

A comment character does not begin a comment when it is included in a quoted string. The following example does not contain a comment:

 

disabled key MessageA at position 100 150

    " # Data Analysis Phase # "