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When I select a block of text in Geany (editing a bash script) and hit Ctrl + E to comment, Geany inserts #~ at the beginning of every line, instead of just #. Why?

a06e
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  • Anything after `#` is not of any significance. A matter of style, perhaps. – P.P Mar 24 '15 at 12:59
  • @BlueMoon If it's a matter of style, it shouldn't be imposed. I prefer the `#` alone, it's simpler. Is there a setting where I can change this? – a06e Mar 24 '15 at 13:12
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    I haven't use Geany, but it sounds like your [NOPing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOP) a block of code (which puts the `#` in front). I suspect that Geany has a reverse function which removes the comment blocks and reactivates the code. The `#~` may allow Geany to tell the difference between blocks of code it NOPed, and your regular comments. – David W. Mar 24 '15 at 13:30
  • @DavidW. Good assuming ;) See my answer – frlan Mar 25 '15 at 09:14

1 Answers1

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Geany is adding the ~ after the # to mark these lines as been toggled. Ctrl + E is toggeling the comment in default so 

# Original Comment
print ("Hello world")

becomes 

#~ # Original Comment
#~ print ("Hello world")

And back again 

# Original Comment
print ("Hello world")

Without some special marker it would might be hard to recognize what has been comment and what has been normal code.

frlan
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    +1 That makes sense. However, Geany is the first editor that I've seen that does this. Sublime Text, gEdit, and others, just use `#` and work fine. Do you know if there is a way to tell Geany to use `#` instead of `#~`? – a06e Mar 25 '15 at 12:08
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    At least you can configure it at Preferences->Editor. Keeping the field blank might would do the trick. – frlan Mar 25 '15 at 12:34
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    Yes, Preferences->Editor->Comment Toggle Marker -- if you make the Comment Toggle Marker "empty" (remove the ~) then it marks with the regular # which I really prefer. – Jamil Said Nov 15 '20 at 00:35
  • But will cause the toggle function to don't work properly anymore. – frlan Nov 16 '20 at 06:12