The pound sign (#) tells NMAKE32 that what follows is a comment and not a description file statement to be acted on. NMAKE32 ignores blank lines in description files. The pound sign cannot be used in in-line files to indicate comments (see In-Line Files).

A comment can be on a line by itself or on the same line with a description file statement that will be executed. When a comment is on a line by itself, the pound sign can be anywhere on the line. When the comment is on the same line as an executable description file statement, the pound sign follows the description file statement and everything that follows the pound sign on that line is considered to be a comment and is therefore ignored by NMAKE32.

Comment lines cannot be continued with the backslash character.

The pound sign can be used as a literal character if it is preceded by a caret (^). See Escape Characters for more information.

Example:

#  The following description file shows examples of comments:

# This is a comment line.

program.exe: program.obj abcd.obj # This is a comment.
       ilink program abcd;

# These three lines, 1,
#  2, and
#  3, are comment lines.

program.obj:     program.c  xxx.h
       icc -c program.c

abcd.obj:        abcd.c     xxx.h
       icc -c abcd.c