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 Comments in `awk' Programs
 --------------------------
 
    A "comment" is some text that is included in a program for the sake
 of human readers; it is not really part of the program.  Comments can
 explain what the program does, and how it works.  Nearly all
 programming languages have provisions for comments, because programs are
 typically hard to understand without their extra help.
 
    In the `awk' language, a comment starts with the sharp sign
 character, `#', and continues to the end of the line.  The `#' does not
 have to be the first character on the line. The `awk' language ignores
 the rest of a line following a sharp sign.  For example, we could have
 put the following into `advice':
 
      # This program prints a nice friendly message.  It helps
      # keep novice users from being afraid of the computer.
      BEGIN    { print "Don't Panic!" }
 
    You can put comment lines into keyboard-composed throw-away `awk'
 programs also, but this usually isn't very useful; the purpose of a
 comment is to help you or another person understand the program at a
 later time.
 
    *Caution:* As mentioned in  One-shot Throw-away `awk' Programs
 One-shot, you can enclose small to medium programs in single quotes, in
 order to keep your shell scripts self-contained.  When doing so,
 _don't_ put an apostrophe (i.e., a single quote) into a comment (or
 anywhere else in your program). The shell will interpret the quote as
 the closing quote for the entire program. As a result, usually the
 shell will print a message about mismatched quotes, and if `awk'
 actually runs, it will probably print strange messages about syntax
 errors.  For example:
 
      awk 'BEGIN { print "hello" } # let's be cute'
 

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