An asterisk at the start of the line before @require prevents it from being checked

[TechnicalFowl]

It's a habit that goes back a long way for me to put an asterisk at the start of each line in a block comment for a function ref. But doing this silently prevents the @require from functioning.

Reproducer:

<*
 * @require input < 10
 *>
fn void do_bar(int input)
{
    io::printfn("Doing bar on %d", input);
}

fn void main()
{
    do_bar(16);
}

Expected output:

11: 
12: fn void main()
13: {
14:     do_bar(16);
        ^^^^^^^^^^
(C:/Data/dx12.c3l/examples/test/src/main.c3:14:5) Error: @require "input < 10" violated.

Actual output:

Doing bar on 16

C3C version:

C3 Compiler Version:       0.7.3 (Pre-release, Jun 27 2025 11:41:15)
Installed directory:       C:/Data/c3c/build/Release/
Git Hash:                  962a1fc8733c386eeba68360213964da5eabd2a6
Backends:                  LLVM
LLVM version:              19.1.5
LLVM default target:       x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

[FoxKiana]

iirc the lexer or parser is in a different state in doc comments so it might just look for an @ as the first char for contracts

[lerno]

Yes. There is really no way for the lexer to figure out that you added * by accident. Contracts start with an @ identifier on a new row.

[FoxKiana]

you could mark it as a warning in the parser and check if it's a valid contract name during sema and warn if it is

would get marked as possible and sema confirms

<*
 If you multiply 2 + 2
 * @require you get...
*>

would get marked as possible and sema denies

<*
 Call something and assign using 
 *@myval = 123
*>

first one warns, second one doesn't

[lerno]

I am not keen on fixing this. Yes, it would be nice to have a warning on this, but the problem tying to create warnings on things that are valid is that it's not clear that it is a problem. Maybe one can have a "warning on contracts in doc comment description" at some point in time, but heuristics like this is nothing I want to do at this point.

Shouldn't this be trivially seen in any half decent syntax highlighter even?