When debugging, I often find that I have to comment and un-comment a block of code several times during the process of trying to find out what’s going on. That used to mean typing and deleting comment block characters repetitively, but not anymore. Here’s a simple solution to that problem: Comment or un-comment an entire code block of code by typing or deleting a single character.

I was able to arrive at this solution by combining the one-line comment with the comment block in a way that takes advantage of the rules the different types of comments have to follow.

The One-Line Comment

One-line comment rules dictate that everything after the comment characters must be ignored for the rest of that line. They look like this:

<?php
// My code below
$someVar = array("foo", "bar", "blah");
echo " ";
print_r($someVar);
echo "";

The Block Comment

Block comment rules dictate that once the beginning characters are started, everything up until the ending characters is ignored. They look like this:

<?php
/* My code below
$someVar = array("foo", "bar", "blah");
echo " ";
print_r($someVar);
echo ""; */

Combining The Two: The Best of Both Worlds

Using both those comment style rules, we can combine the two comment styles in a way that will allow us to comment and un-comment a block of code with by adding or deleting a single character. The trick is to make both the beginning and ending lines both single-line AND block style comments, like so:

<?php
//* My code below
$someVar = array("foo", "bar", "blah");
echo " ";
print_r($someVar);
echo "";
// */

In the above example, you notice that the code will still run – it’s not commented out because the first line is following the rules of the single-line comment – ignoring the block comment declaration on the same line. By removing the first backslash at the beginning of the block, we can comment out the entire code block by enabling the block comment style instead of the single-line style. The last single-comment line is ignored because the block comment rules ignore everything up until the end block comment declaration at the end of the line:

<?php
/* My code below
$someVar = array("foo", "bar", "blah");
echo " ";
print_r($someVar);
echo "";
// */

So a single character – a backslash at the very beginning of the block declaration can now comment or un-comment the entire block by switching the comment rules back and forth between single-line and block style. The code examples provided are in PHP, but this trick will work with any language that supports both single-line and block style comments.