LANG.COMM.CODE : Commented-out Code

Summary

A comment appears to contain a lot of code.

Comment text is considered likely to be code if its proportion of operator characters (!#%^&*()+={}\[]:;<>/) is consistent with that typically seen in C and C++ source code. This heuristic can be thrown off by short comments, so warnings will not be issued for comments that contain only a small number of characters.

The various thresholds involved in this determination are controlled by configuration file parameters:

• COMMENTED_OUT_CODE_SIZE_THRESHOLD specifies the minimum number of characters a comment must contain to be included in checks for this warning class.
• COMMENTED_OUT_CODE_MIN_RATIO and COMMENTED_OUT_CODE_MAX_RATIO specify lower and upper bounds on the operator/non-operator character ratio that will be treated as indicating the presence of code.

See the linked individual parameter documentation for full details.

Properties

WARNING_FILTER += allow class="Commented-out Code"

Example

int f (int i){
                 /* 'Commented-out Code' warning issued for following comment block */
  
    /* int b;
     * int a = i;
     * a = i++;
     * b = g(a);
     */

    i++;
 
    /* this comment is ordinary text */                  /* does not contain source code */
    return i;
}

Relevant Configuration File Parameters

The following configuration file parameters affect checks for this warning class.

• COMMENTED_OUT_CODE_MAX_RATIO
• COMMENTED_OUT_CODE_MIN_RATIO
• COMMENTED_OUT_CODE_SIZE_THRESHOLD
• REPORT_SIMILAR_WARNINGS
• WARNING_FILTER