torment

n 1: unbearable physical pain [syn: {torture}]

2: extreme mental distress [syn: {anguish}, {torture}]

3: intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical

pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned"

[syn: {agony}, {torture}]

4: a feeling of intense annoyance caused by being tormented;

"so great was his harassment that he wanted to destroy his

tormentors" [syn: {harassment}]

5: a severe affliction [syn: {curse}]

6: the act of harassing someone [syn: {badgering}, {worrying},

{bedevilment}]

v 1: torment emotionally or mentally [syn: {torture}, {excruciate},

{rack}]

2: annoy constantly [syn: {rag}, {tantalize}, {bedevil}, {crucify},

{dun}, {frustrate}]

3: subject to torture [syn: {torture}, {excruciate}]

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

too heavily commented code isn't much better, 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.

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);

(1998-04-28)