comment
    n 1: a statement that expresses a personal opinion or belief or
         adds information; "from time to time she contributed a
         personal comment on his account" [syn: remark, comment,
         input]
    2: a written explanation or criticism or illustration that is
       added to a book or other textual material; "he wrote an
       extended comment on the proposal" [syn: comment,
       commentary]
    3: a report (often malicious) about the behavior of other
       people; "the divorce caused much gossip" [syn: gossip,
       comment, scuttlebutt]
    v 1: make or write a comment on; "he commented the paper of his
         colleague" [syn: comment, notice, remark, point
         out]
    2: explain or interpret something
    3: provide interlinear explanations for words or phrases; "He
       annotated on what his teacher had written" [syn: gloss,
       comment, annotate]

Comment \Com"ment\, v. t.
   To comment on. [Archaic.] --Fuller.
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Comment \Com"ment\, n. [Cf. OF. comment.]
   1. A remark, observation, or criticism; gossip; discourse;
      talk.
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            Their lavish comment when her name was named.
                                                  --Tennyson.
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   2. A note or observation intended to explain, illustrate, or
      criticise the meaning of a writing, book, etc.;
      explanation; annotation; exposition.
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            All the volumes of philosophy,
            With all their comments.              --Prior.
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Comment \Com"ment\ (?; 277), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Commented; p.
   pr. & vb. n. Commenting.] [F. commenter, L. commentari to
   meditate upon, explain, v. intens. of comminisci, commentus,
   to reflect upon, invent; com- + the root of meminisse to
   remember, mens mind. See Mind.]
   To make remarks, observations, or criticism; especially, to
   write notes on the works of an author, with a view to
   illustrate his meaning, or to explain particular passages; to
   write annotations; -- often followed by on or upon.
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         A physician to comment on your malady.   --Shak.
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         Critics . . . proceed to comment on him. --Dryden.
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         I must translate and comment.            --Pope.
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comment

    (Or "remark") Explanatory text embedded in
   program source (or less often data) intended to help human
   readers understand it.

   Code completely without comments is often hard to read, but
   code with too many comments is also bad, especially if the
   comments are not kept up-to-date with changes to the code.
   Too much commenting may mean that the code is
   over-complicated.  A good rule is to comment everything that
   needs it but write code that doesn't need much of it.
   Comments that explain __why__ something is done and how the code
   relates to its environment are useful.

   A particularly irksome form of over-commenting explains
   exactly what each statement does, even when it is obvious to
   any reasonably competant programmer, e.g.

   	/* Open the input file */
   	infd = open(input_file, O_RDONLY);

   (2007-02-19)