/! / What does that mean?

Question

I just found this comment declaration in some xcode sample project:

/*!
@property masterVolume
@abstract Sets the master volume
*/
@property float masterVolume;

The comment is green as usual, the @property and @ abstract are dark green. If I remove the exclamation mark, they have the same green. What the heck does that mean?

Related to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6605535/what-are-documentation-comments-in-xcode ? — Cyrille, Oct 10 '11 at 15:35

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 21 '20 at 14:03

5

To make transition from headerdoc a bit simpler, appledoc (tool to generate documentation from code so you save time in documentation) also accepts headerdoc style multiline comments:

/*! Comment */

Source

edited Jan 21 '20 at 14:03

Andre Holzner

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answered Oct 10 '11 at 15:41

Farrukh Subhani

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So basically, if I have appledoc, that is going to use that comment to write a documentation? nice :) – Faser Oct 10 '11 at 16:38

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 10 '11 at 15:38

In Objective-C, a comment is only delimited by /* */, so you are right, the exclamation point is not necessary to form a comment. However, in this case, the ! there is to say that that commment should be read by an auto-documentation tool, such as Doxygen or AutoDoc. The same goes for the @ symbols there. @property is saying that you are documenting a property called masterVolume and @abstract is describing what the property is for.

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 27 '19 at 14:20

3

It's a Qt comment style. It is treated as a block comment by doxygen, Headerdoc, and Appledoc. The author was familiar with Qt programming and chose that comment style. He could have chosen /** instead, just a matter of taste.

edited Jan 27 '19 at 14:20

albert

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answered Oct 10 '11 at 15:40

Jano

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/*! */ What does that mean?

3 Answers3

/! / What does that mean?