1.1.19 How to Comment Out a Line of Code

A single-line C# comment begins with:

//

You have already used it to write explanations.

The same syntax can temporarily turn one source line into comment text.

Original statement:

player1.team.name = "Wildcats";

Temporarily commented out:

// player1.team.name = "Wildcats";

The compiler no longer treats that line as an executable statement.

Suppose one line throws an exception.

Temporarily commenting out the line can help answer:

That can be useful diagnostic evidence.

It does not automatically prove that removing the line is the correct final solution.

Imagine the requirement says the program must assign the team name.

This line fails:

player1.team.name = "Wildcats";

Commenting it out:

// player1.team.name = "Wildcats";

may stop the exception.

The required team name is also no longer assigned.

The symptom disappeared because the behavior disappeared.

That is not the same as repairing the object relationship.

Avoid turning half of the program into comments.

If you disable many statements at once, it becomes difficult to know which one changed the result.

Use the smallest change that answers the current debugging question.

One advantage of:

// player1.team.name = "Wildcats";

is that the original source remains visible.

You can see exactly what was disabled.

That is safer than deleting the statement and trying to reconstruct it later from memory.

After the investigation, this is poor final code:

// player1.team.name = "Wildcats";  // crashes

if the requirement still expects the relationship and value to work.

The final source should reflect the actual intended solution.

Temporary debugging comments should not become unexplained permanent debris.

Temporary commenting is a debugging tool.

The real goal is still to produce source that:

Use comments to investigate, not to hide unresolved defects.