Commenting input files - GNU LilyPond
Description: GNU LilyPond

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### 2.12 Commenting input files

A comment is a remark for the human reader of the music input; it is ignored while parsing, so it has no effect on the printed output. There are two types of comments. The percent symbol ``%`' introduces a line comment; after `%` the rest of the line is ignored. A block comment marks a whole section of music input. Anything that is enclosed in `%{` and `%}` is ignored. The following fragment shows possible uses for comments

    % notes for twinkle twinkle follow
      c4 c g' g a a g2

    %{
        This line, and the notes below
        are ignored, since they are in a
        block comment.

        g g f f e e d d c2
    %}

There is a special statement that is a kind of comment. The `\version` statement marks for which version of LilyPond the file was written. To mark a file for version 2.6.0, use

    \version "2.6.0"

These annotations make future upgrades of LilyPond go more smoothly. Changes in the syntax are handled with a special program, `convert-ly` (see Updating files with convert-ly), and it uses `\version` to determine what rules to apply.

This page is for LilyPond-2.8.8 (stable-branch).

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