commenting out blocks of code

[Peter Hansen]

john peter wrote:
> is there a similar mechanism in python, other than prefixing
> the '#' character to the start of each statement i do  not
> want to execute (which gets old very quickly if one needs to
> comment and uncomment several statements a couple of
> times while "playing around with code" say during initial design)?

In addition to the approach Paul has suggested, you should also consider 
using a better editor, as most decent editors should have some kind of 
"block comment/uncomment" feature that prevents that operation from 
getting old very quickly...

Scite, for example, lets me selected a block and hit Ctrl-Q to either 
comment or uncomment the block.  (It does this by prefixing each line 
with #~ instead of just #, which allows it to detect when a line is 
already so commented and reverse the operation.)  Other decent editors 
have their own approach.

-Peter