What does /** this */ mean in PHP files?

What does /** this */ mean in PHP files? Does it have some special meaning, or is it treated as a normal multiline commen开发者_Python百科t like /* comment */?

As far as I know they have no special meaning, and are treated as normal multiline comments.

If you were referring to /** these */ (with a single * for the closing delimiter), they're called PHPDoc comments. To the PHP interpreter they're still multiline comments, but The PHP interpreter tokenizes these as T_DOC_COMMENT, and to many IDEs and the phpDocumentor tool they convey their actual documentative meaning.

No special meaning as such. But it may be used by tools such as PHPDoc to generate documentation.