FCOMMENT

FCOMMENT is a convention used in some software projects to embed structured metadata within source code or accompanying documentation. The term is used to identify inline comment directives that are recognized by specialized tooling rather than by compilers, enabling machine-readable information without affecting runtime behavior.

Purpose and uses: FCOMMENT blocks carry metadata such as author, creation date, module purpose, references, and tags. This facilitates automated documentation generation, better code reviews, changelog assembly, and static analysis. Because the content is machine-readable, it can be extracted and indexed by build systems or documentation pipelines without parsing natural language text.

Syntax and examples: A typical FCOMMENT block begins with a line containing FCOMMENT and a set of key-value pairs, or a compact JSON-like payload. Example (illustrative): FCOMMENT author="Jane Doe" date="2025-12-28" section="Networking" tags=["tcp","reliability"] description="Add timeout handling to socket layer". Another common form uses semicolon-delimited fields on a single line, e.g., FCOMMENT author=Jane Doe; date=2025-12-28; tags=networking,reliability.

Implementation and tooling: Parsers scan source files for FCOMMENT markers and extract the payload into documentation generators, dashboards, or lint rules. Some language ecosystems provide dedicated syntax extensions or doc-block formats that incorporate FCOMMENT as a recognized tag.

Limitations and adoption: Because FCOMMENT is not a universal standard, syntax and tooling vary across projects. The approach requires discipline to keep metadata up to date and can create noise if overused. See also: docblocks, code annotations, metadata tagging.