There is no preprocessor in Java. Depending on your build system, you may be able to use a third-party preprocessor (you can find lots of them by searching for "java preprocessor"). Some examples are
- pre-processor-java
- java-comment-preprocessor
- javapp
- prebop
Depending on the scope you want to comment out, you can use block comments and sometimes something like
if (false) {
. . .
}
If all else fails, just comment out every line using //
. Most IDEs have a way to do this (and undo it) efficiently.
P.S. If you can use block comments (not always possible, since block comments can't be nested in Java), there's a nice trick that makes it easier to toggle off and on the comment-out portion. Start your block comment on a line by itself, but end it with another isolated line that starts with a line comment, like this:
/*
<block of code ignored as comment>
//*/
Then if you want to turn the commented-out section back on, just add a second /
at the start of the block:
//*
<block of code now active>
//*/
To toggle the code off again, just remove the first /
. (Without the //
at the start of the last line, the dangling */
would be a syntax error whenever you activated the code by adding a /
to the opening line of the block.)