Compiler directive
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In computer science, a compiler directive is data embedded in source code by programmers to tell compilers some intention about compilation. A compiler directive tells the compiler how to compile, other source code tells the compiler what to compile.
Examples: In HTML a compiler directive can be used to denote whether a page should be cached or not. A compiler directive could tell the compiler whether to do range checking on array indexes or trust that the programmer has not written code that can cause an error.
In C, it is called a pragma (pragmatic information), in Ada, a significant comment.