Comments

Commenting

When we code, it is good practice to leave notes for ourselves. Comments are parts of our script that do not run. In R, any text following the # symbol is treated as a comment.

Comments can be used to leave notes for yourself, add organization to your code, and document how your particular analysis is meant to run. Pay attention to comments throughout this course as they often have instructions or extra information!

Take this chunk for example. Even though there is plenty of text in the comments, only the output 2+2 will run.

#This is a comment and will not affect the code when I run it.
#We need to make sure each line that we want commented is precededed by a # symbol
#3+3
#We can see above that the command 3+3 will not run unless we remove the # symbol
2 + 2

## [1] 4

Using comments often is key to keeping your code neat and organized. Imagine coming back to a particular script 3 months later and having no idea why you did what you did!

In short, use comments and use them often!