Question

I know LuaDoc uses “—” on the first line of comments like this:

--- an example function
-- @param a parameter a desc
-- @param b parameter b desc
function f (a,b)
   --code
   --code
end

However I see this in the beginning of comments:

--~ comment for a function
function f (a,b)
   --code
   --code
end

does it have special meaning?

Answer 1

The SciTE editor distributed with Lua for Windows uses this as a marker for their automatic commenting facility.

Try selecting a block and select ‘Edit/Block Comment or Uncomment’ from the menu, it adds --~ to the front of the line. Likewise Uncomment removes it. However if you just have --, then select the menu option it doesn’t recognize this as a comment, and adds it’s own comment --~.

I’ve assumed that it has no significance, it’s just an easy marker for the SciTE editor to parse. As noted by RBerteig there is no special significance of --~ to LuaDoc, and it is otherwise just a comment like any other to Lua itself.