This form of the comment delimiters is important when you need to use the JScript pre-processor directives. Enclosing them in a comment block hides them from non compliant browsers and script interpreters.

The pre-processor directive has the following general format:

@<some_keyword>

To hide it within comments, you need to modify it so it resembles this general form:

/*@<some_keyword> @*/

There are special requirements for enclosing entire blocks of code when the conditional inclusion directives are used. Refer to the @if topic for more details.

It seems to be convention to place a space character in front of the closing @*/ comment delimiter. This may not be strictly necessary for functional reasons but aids the readability of the directives when placed into portable code.