A reference to a standard textbook or patent disclosure takes very little
space in the source code.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Chops Westfield [SMTP:billw@CISCO.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 1:34 AM
> To:   PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject:      Re: [OT] Re: How to write bad code - was Re: C vs. ASM
>
> Surprisingly, one of the times that it is common NOT to comment very
> verbosely is when the algorithm used is in fact VERY complex.  In this
> case it's generally assumed that the code is documented extensively
> EXTERNALLY (like, in books, papers, patents, and so on.)  For example,
> I've never seen anyone attempt to extensively comment a routine that
> calculates CRCs (either bitwise or bytewise.)  Your program is NOT
> the place to explain why a series of shifts and xors ends up producing
> coefficients for a polynomial...
>
> BillW