Doc-Comments

Similar to Rust, comments starting with /// (three slashes) or /** (two asterisks) are doc-comments.

Doc-comments can only appear in front of function definitions, not any other elements. Therefore, doc-comments are not available under no_function.

Requires metadata

Doc-comments are only supported under the metadata feature.

If metadata is not active, doc-comments are treated as normal comments.

/// This is a valid one-line doc-comment
fn foo() {}

/** This is a
 ** valid block
 ** doc-comment
 **/
fn bar(x) {
   /// Syntax error: this doc-comment is invalid
   x + 1
}

/** Syntax error: this doc-comment is invalid */
let x = 42;

/// Syntax error: this doc-comment is also invalid
{
   let x = 42;
}

Tip: Special cases

Long streams of //////… and /*****… do NOT form doc-comments. This is consistent with popular [comment] block styles for C-like languages.

///////////////////////////////  <- this is not a doc-comment
// This is not a doc-comment //  <- this is not a doc-comment
///////////////////////////////  <- this is not a doc-comment

// However, watch out for comment lines starting with '///'

//////////////////////////////////////////  <- this is not a doc-comment
/// This, however, IS a doc-comment!!! ///  <- doc-comment!
//////////////////////////////////////////  <- this is not a doc-comment

/****************************************
 *                                      *
 * This is also not a doc-comment block *
 * so we don't have to put this in      *
 * front of a function.                 *
 *                                      *
 ****************************************/

Using Doc-Comments

Doc-comments are stored within the script’s AST after compilation.

The AST::iter_functions method provides a ScriptFnMetadata instance for each function defined within the script, which includes doc-comments.

Doc-comments never affect the evaluation of a script nor do they incur significant performance overhead. However, third party tools can take advantage of this information to auto-generate documentation for Rhai script functions.