Ruby is not good at comments

Problem

Imagine that you are hard-coding some long list into your Ruby code and you need to

• wrap the long line into multiple lines
• comment on some items

Let's look at the 1st goal (imagine a lot longer list)!

@@import_fields = [ \
    "Name" \
    , "Organization" \
    , "Role" \
    , "Internal ID" \
];

Pretty ugly, because the statement separator is the newline and you should escape it. But doable. Let's move on!

Completing the second goal is not possible. The only commenting option is the line-commenting which is starts with the # sign and ends when the line ends. If you place the comment before the backslash (\), your interpreter will not detect the newline escaper backslash. If you place the comment after it, then it stops being a newline escaper.

Nonexistent solutions

• The Ruby guys failed to add statement separators / terminators to the language and that remains this way. I think the intention was to make life easier, but I believe they made it harder. Someone someday may enlighten me.
• They should introduce block comments. It would be backward compatible and would make the World a better place.
• Or they should detect the newline escaping after the # sign.

Workaround

@@import_fields = []
@@import_fields << "Name"
@@import_fields << "Organization" # Some clever saying about this field
@@import_fields << "Role"
@@import_fields << "Internal ID" # And some eternal wisdom about this

If you know a better way, don't hesitate to tell me!