James McCreery wrote:
An example of what I'm talking about: In my 7.1 installation the /etc/X11/xdm/Xresources file uses the "!" character to start comment lines and puts the "#" character before IF, ENDIF, ELSE type statements. This confused me because I thought that the "#" character *always* meant the start of a comment line.
Certainly not true.
Is this file (/etc/X11/xdm/Xresources) a shell script? If so why does it use the "#" character in this way?
Hadn't noticed that before. This isn't a shell script, but a configuration file. The '#define', etc. are used in the same way as in C source code. Obviously he can't use '#' as a comment character as well, like in may config files, so he chooses an '!'. There are no hard and fast rules about what various characters mean - it is entirely at the discression of the author of the program. There are some conventions, but this would be one of the cases where one can't use '#' as a comment character, hence the confusion. Bye, Chris -- __ _ -o)/ / (_)__ __ ____ __ Chris Reeves /\\ /__/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / ICQ# 22219005 _\_v __/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\