Block Comments in a Shell Script

Question

Is there a simple way to comment out a block of code in a shell script?

Answer 1

A variation on the here-doc trick in the accepted answer by sunny256 is to use the Perl keywords for comments. If your comments are actually some sort of documentation, you can then start using the Perl syntax inside the commented block, which allows you to print it out nicely formatted, convert it to a man-page, etc.

As far as the shell is concerned, you only need to replace 'END' with '=cut'.

echo "before comment"
: <<'=cut'
=pod

=head1 NAME
   podtest.sh - Example shell script with embedded POD documentation

etc.

=cut
echo "after comment"

(Found on "Embedding documentation in shell script")