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What is the meaning of #XXX in code comments?

I have seen this a lot in code, even vim marks it as a special case. #TODO and #FIXME are two other fix markers vim highlights but what does #XXX mean?

Solution

  • XXX in a comment is usually a heads-up. It could be:

    • Something that's not implemented completely correctly.
    • Something that should be fixed later on.
    • Highlighting a possible problem spot.
    • Something you're not sure about, a question.

    I've often preferred a more descriptive tag like FIXME or TODO or HACK. XXX is often used as a catch all for the above.

    Searching for 'XXX' on the FreeBSD code cross reference is a good example of many of the uses. There are thousands...