Delimiters for Visual C++ documentation tags

The use of documentation tags requires delimiters, which indicate to the compiler where a documentation comment begins and ends.

You can use the following kinds of delimiters with the XML documentation tags:

Delimiter	Description
///	This is the form that's shown in documentation examples and used by the Visual Studio C++ project templates.
/** */	These are multiline delimiters.

There are some formatting rules when using the /** */ delimiters:

• For the line that contains the /** delimiter, if the rest of the line is whitespace, the line isn't processed for comments. If the first character is whitespace, that whitespace character is ignored and the rest of the line is processed. Otherwise, the entire text of the line after the /** delimiter is processed as part of the comment.

• For the line that contains the */ delimiter, if there's only whitespace up to the */ delimiter, that line is ignored. Otherwise, the text on the line up to the */ delimiter is processed as part of the comment, subject to the pattern-matching rules described in the following bullet.

• For the lines after the one that begins with the /** delimiter, the compiler looks for a common pattern at the beginning of each line that consists of optional white space and an asterisk (*), followed by more optional whitespace. If the compiler finds a common set of characters at the beginning of each line, it will ignore that pattern for all lines after the /** delimiter, up to and possibly including the line that contains the */ delimiter.

Examples

• The only part of the following comment that will be processed is the line that begins with <summary>. The following two tag formats will produce the same comments:

  /**
  <summary>text</summary>
  */
  /** <summary>text</summary> */
  

• The compiler applies a pattern of " * " to ignore at the beginning of the second and third lines.

  /**
   * <summary>
   *  text </summary>*/
  

• The compiler finds no pattern in this comment because there's no asterisk on the second line. All text on the second and third lines, up until the */, will be processed as part of the comment.

  /**
   * <summary>
     text </summary>*/
  

• The compiler finds no pattern in this comment for two reasons. First, there's no line that begins with a consistent number of spaces before the asterisk. Second, the fifth line begins with a tab, which doesn't match spaces. All text from the second line until the */ will be processed as part of the comment.

  /**
    * <summary>
    * text
   *  text2
     *  </summary>
  */
  

See also

XML documentation