Interstitial (Mid-Line) Comments support

[gdvine]

Description:

In certain development and debugging scenarios, it's beneficial to insert comments within a line of code, known as interstitial or mid-line comments. This practice allows developers to temporarily disable specific segments of a line or provide context without commenting out the entire line. Currently, Zed supports full-line and block comments but lacks the capability to insert comments within a line.​

Proposed Feature:

1. User selects some text.
2. User selects new menu option Toggle interstitial comment, key binding (commonly cmd-opt-/), etc.
3. Zed inserts the language-specific comment characters before and after the selection(s).​

Use Cases:

Testing and Debugging: Quickly disable specific function parameters or arguments without removing them, facilitating efficient testing.​

Code Clarity: Provide context or explanations for particular segments within a line, enhancing readability.​

Example:

In JavaScript, a developer might want to temporarily disable an argument in a function call:​

// Original line
processData(param1, param2, param3);

// With interstitial comment to disable param2
processData(param1, /* param2, */ param3);

Benefits:

• Enhances flexibility in code editing and testing.​
• Reduces the need for duplicating lines to comment out specific segments.​
• Aligns Zed's commenting capabilities with those of other leading code editors.​

Additional Context:

While interstitial comments are less common than full-line comments, they serve specific purposes in development workflows, particularly in testing and debugging phases. Implementing this feature would provide developers with more granular control over their code annotations.

Similar issues

Both of these reference block comments, which are not the same thing:

• Block comment command #4751
• Better comments #4808