Any line having an # (ASCII 0x23) character in the first column
is a comment line.
Comments may be used to insert information that is not part of the database but useful in other ways. They are completely ignored by processing tools and can only be seen by looking at the recfile itself.
It is also quite convenient to comment-out information from the recfile without having to remove it in a definitive way: you may want to recover the data into the database later! Comment lines can be used to comment-out both full registers and single fields:
Name: Jose E. Marchesi # Occupation: Software Engineer # Severe lack of brain capacity # Fired on 02/01/2009 (without compensation) Occupation: Unoccupied
Comments are also useful for headers, footers, comment blocks and all kind of markers:
# -*- mode: rec -*- # # TODO # # This file contains the Bugs database of GNU recutils. # # Blah blah... ... # End of TODO
Unlike some file formats, comments in recfiles must be complete lines.
You cannot start a comment in the middle of a line.
For example, in the following record, the # does not start a comment:
Name: Peter the Great # Russian Tsar Age: 53