boxes is an awesome tool for coders who has ECSLCS syndrome (Even Comment Style Like Crazy S**t). I have a tendency to section codes into groups, then dissect into small pieces, and then unnecessarily break down to lines, whenever I read a code. Id put up a comment block to mark a section, then a smaller one for sub-sections, then one-liner comment for a line of code.

When you cant even maintain your own coding style, you do not even dare to think your comment styles all look the same. If ones code is a mess, his or her comments most likely make the whole file hard to read. I usually can begin with a nice start, but after a few edits or a month, my code would look like being fed into paper shredder twice in different entries of angle.

You can imagine when I saw boxes, its like a believer witnessing a wonder. I asked myself why havent anyone told me about this tool before. Anyway, I have set up my own configuration for a few languages, such as Python, C, CSS, JavaScript, shell, etc. Also set up new keybindings in Vim with my almost-zero-Vim-scripting skill.

To give you a quick idea, how you use it, see the following output:

$ echo 'heading 1' | boxes -d h1-poun
#############
# heading 1 #
#############

$ echo 'heading 2' | boxes -d h2-pound
# heading 2
############

$ echo 'normal comment' | boxes -d cmt-pound
# normal comment

boxes can not only comment, but also uncomment. Simply supply with -r, the comment text will be reverted back, whatever it adds it removes:

$ $ cat | boxes -d h1-pound -r <<EOF
> ##########
> # foobar #
> ##########
> EOF
foobar

It ships with a lot of default styles, including some crazy ones, really really crazy styles, even I can call that. Anyway, its a program with long history for almost 14 years (1999/03/18). Probably older than your kids or even you?

I honestly hope this would improve the readability of my code, keep my code would look consistent, at least for my comments. My coding style is still a mess like chaos theory. One problem at a time, right? Someday, I would code like in google-styleguide or airbnb. To be perfect straight, I dont even have any strength to compose of a style guideline which I would like to follow. Deciding 2-space or 4-space is hard enough, luckily, in Python, I dont have to decide where to put the closing brackets for control flow statements.