I don't understand terms

**TXbirder** · March 11th, 2013

I am trouble shooting and a resposnse included "...comment out the top few lines...", and a result on Terminal included "Uncomment the following two lines....

How does one COMMENT or UNCOMMENT lines? A thesauraus does not provide an answer.

John

**Absolute Terror** · March 11th, 2013

http://www.unix.com/unix-dummies-que...ing-lines.html

Two seconds on Bing.

**oldos2er** · March 11th, 2013

Generally # (or sometimes two together ##) is a comment mark, which tell the system to ignore that particular line in a given file. For an example run

Code:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

**lancasterjoe** · March 11th, 2013

You must be like me ... totally new to this

I get something which looks like the old DOS Prompt, instead of something graphic which kooks quite like a Windows prompt - ubunto 12.10 should be quite like operating Windows, but something is amiss.

**coldcritter64** · March 11th, 2013

Originally Posted by lancasterjoe

...ubuntu 12.10 should be quite like operating Windows, but something is amiss.

bolding is my alteration, one to add to your systems dictionary?

Please have a careful read of: http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm. (I think as you are a new ubuntu user you may also be new to this forum

, mar 2013... welcome

)

@ OP, simply placing a # symbol before a line, or removing a # symbol from a line, either comments out or uncomments a line respectively as previously mentioned.

**vasa1** · March 12th, 2013

Originally Posted by coldcritter64

bolding is my alteration, one to add to your systems dictionary?

...

Someone has a list of the variations

**TXbirder** · March 12th, 2013

Thank you.

**vasa1** · March 12th, 2013

My two bits ...
Different file types have different ways to indicate comments. I'm familiar with the following ones.

Files with a .rc suffix usually have # at the start of a line to indicate a commented out line.
.css files have commented material within /* and */.
.html (and .xml) files have commented material within .

**schragge** · March 12th, 2013

There are also C++ style comments sometimes (e.g. CUPS and Apache web server configuration files): //

**Cheesemill** · March 12th, 2013

You occasionally get ; used for comments as well (php.ini).

Unless stated otherwise though you can usually assume the # is used for comments in Ubuntu configuration files.