Talk:Strip block comments

State Machine

Note that this problem definition strongly favors a sequential state machine implementation. In particular, the example treatment for /*/ stuff */ adds complexity to a parallel implementation. --Rdm 18:25, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

We could bump it back to draft. Do you have a better definition? --Michael Mol 18:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe the intent here is to emulate the treatment of comments in existing languages. Note also that no example treatment is given for cases like /*/*/*/*/*/ though presumably that sequence is equivalent to a single asterisk?

In any event, I think that the specification should reflect the rigid character of the desired end. I would eliminate the requirement that the comment delimiters be passed as parameters (or expand the definition of those parameters to include their aspects which have been implicitly specified... but I can not see a good way to do that). I would also include explicit examples for the treatment of character sequences which look like delimiters but are not delimiters because of their position.

If my interpretation is acceptable, I could tackle re-writing the task specification. --Rdm 18:47, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Definition of delimiters?

Do we have a (constant) definition of the delimiters to use or are they parameters to the stripping function? This is important because it leads to quite different solutions… –Donal Fellows 09:56, 3 November 2010 (UTC)