Is there any way to quickly turn on and off block comments in PHP? I find myself commenting out sections of code for debugging/development and when it go back to uncomment them it's 10 seconds finding exactly where the closing tag is and another second to delete it. Not too bad on the surface, but when you comment & uncomment often those seconds add up and can really mess with my "groove".
You can combine single level and block level commenting to get it pretty close. For example:
Normal block commenting:
/*
[ This is not executed ]
*/
Would turn into this (block comment "on"):
/*
[ This is not executed ]
//*/
And this (block comment "off")
//*
[ This is executed ]
//*/
There's only one "/" to swap between"on" and "off". It's not global and you do have to know where the comment block starts, but it's pretty great for development. Seconds matter!
Note the single line comment won't stop the closing block comment from working, so if you have overlapping block comments this may not work as well.
/*
[ This is not executed ]
//*/
[ This is executed ]
//*/
if($debug){
....
}
and toggle $debug from session/GET/config
I suggest you review your approach about how you are doing this. What you need to comment/uncomment/delete a blocks, as it could be very unproductive.
How about you create small methods that does certain functions, and you just comment a small piece of code (that calls those methods).
Or, create it in a way that you turn on and off based on certain variables.
A good example of this is PHP Unit, where any method that starts with test runs. http://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/index.html
Another one is simple test http://www.simpletest.org/
I think when you organize your code and build it while keep these patterns in mind, it could be very productive.