Comments syntax for Idoc Script
- by kyle.hatlestad
Maybe this is widely known and I'm late to the party, but I just ran across the syntax for making comments in Idoc Script. It's been something I've been hoping to see for a long time. And it looks like it quietly snuck into the 10gR3 release.
So for comments in Idoc Script, you simply [[% surround your comments in these symbols. %]] They can be on the same line or span multiple lines.
If you look in the documentation, it still mentions making comments using the syntax. Well, that's certainly not an ideal approach. You're stuffing your comment into an actual variable, it's taking up memory, and you have to watch double-quotes in your comment. A perhaps better way in the old method is to start with my comments . Still not great, but now you're not assigning something to a variable and worrying about quotes.
Unfortunately, this syntax only works in places that use the Idoc format. It can't be used in Idoc files that get indexed (.hcsp & .hcsf) and use the <!--$...--> format. For those, you'll need to continue using the older methods.
While on the topic, I thought I would highlight a great plug-in to Notepad++ that Arnoud Koot here at Oracle wrote for Idoc Script. It does script highlighting as well as type-ahead/auto-completion for common variables, functions, and services. For some reason, I can never seem to remember if it's DOC_INFO_LATESTRELEASE or DOC_INFO_LATEST_RELEASE, so this certainly comes in handy. I've updated his plug-in to use this new comments syntax.
You can download a copy of the plug-in here which includes installation instructions.
