In the ZIL language primer I think there’s an error.
There’s written:
String [Text literal] example: "Zork III: The Dungeon Master"
Comment [Documentation (double quotes)] example: "This is a comment"
In both cases the same syntax is used. As I don’t know ZIL (yet) I have no clue what’s the correct thing. Can someone please tell me, then I can edit the wiki over there.
Well, actually ; means that next statement is ignored (a comment). A double-quoted string is a statement so normally comments looks like:
;"This is a comment"
Because ; ignores next statement a line like this <+ 1 ;<* 2 2> 2> equals 3 (<* 2 2> is ignored).
But…
Outside of routines, in the MDL part of Zil-code, a double-quoted string that don’t associate with anything is just ignored and in practice also acts as a comment.
That wiki site very strongly appears to be AI-generated. I flipped through it and saw a lot of badly-phrased assertions and some outright mistakes. (Mostly about historical context and relationship to other games, not about the ZIL technicalities – but I didn’t look hard at the ZIL technicalities.)
I wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to learn from it.
EDIT: Another thirty seconds of clicking turned up some total lies about the Zork 3 puzzles.