R devel - Sep 2010 - OT: Reason/history behind ## notation for comments?

Off topic, but since I've observe both styles, does anyone know the
history behind/reason for using ## instead of a single # to start
comments in R.  I know some editors do this by default.  Is it because
in C it is easier to distinguish (search/replace/...) comments from C
preprocessor directives such as #include, and that's became a de facto
standard elsewhere?

/Henrik

PS. I don't want to get into a debate on what's the best style.

For what concerns emacs users, the number of '#' has different effects
on the position of the comment. From the ESS manual: 'By default,
comments beginning with ?###? are aligned to the beginning of the
line. Comments beginning with ?##? are aligned to the current level of
indentation for the block containing the comment. Finally, comments
beginning with ?#? are aligned to a column on the right...'. I guess
that ## is the most wanted indentation for comments.

Best wishes,

Laurent

On 22 September 2010 07:26, Henrik Bengtsson <hb at stat.berkeley.edu>
wrote:
> Off topic, but since I've observe both styles, does anyone know the
> history behind/reason for using ## instead of a single # to start
> comments in R. ?I know some editors do this by default. ?Is it because
> in C it is easier to distinguish (search/replace/...) comments from C
> preprocessor directives such as #include, and that's became a de facto
> standard elsewhere?
>
> /Henrik
>
> PS. I don't want to get into a debate on what's the best style.
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>