# comment character

[Avi E. Gross]

In article <291 at ucdavis.UUCP> ccrrick at ucdavis.UUCP (Rick Heli) writes:
>Can anyone tell me why the # character is a comment in INTERACTIVE
>mode in the shell?  I mean, who goes around making comments that
>will never be seen again while running the shell in interactive
>mode?

Why should it mean anything else in interactive mode? I often
create complicated commands I would like to execute later and put a '#'
at the beginning. Then, when I am ready to run it (often after another
process has completed running in the background or another window), I use
the nifty Korn shell commands to return to that line, strip the '#' and
actually run it.

Similarly, I sometimes enter an in-line function, with some lines commented
out and run it. After checkking to see that it does the right things, I edit
it and remove the '#'s.

A better question is why the '#' character was used as a comment character
when the typical UNIX*TM Operating System came with '#' as the default
character-delete character?
-- 
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
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