Comments in Ruby are essential for code documentation and readability. They allow developers to explain their code, leave notes, or temporarily disable certain parts of a program.
Single-line comments start with a hash symbol (#) and continue until the end of the line. They're perfect for brief explanations or annotations.
# This is a single-line comment
puts "Hello, World!" # This comment is at the end of a line of code
For longer explanations, Ruby offers multi-line comments. These begin with =begin
and end with =end
.
=begin
This is a multi-line comment.
It can span several lines.
Use it for longer explanations or to temporarily disable large code blocks.
=end
puts "This code will be executed."
Ruby uses comments for generating documentation. Tools like RDoc can parse special comment formats to create documentation automatically.
# Calculates the sum of two numbers
#
# @param a [Integer] The first number
# @param b [Integer] The second number
# @return [Integer] The sum of a and b
def add(a, b)
a + b
end
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Comments are a crucial aspect of writing clean, maintainable Ruby code. They help other developers (including your future self) understand your code's purpose and functionality. Use them wisely to enhance code readability and collaboration in your Ruby projects.