Editor – HTML – Not ignoring programmer code comments

I have a strange problem when using the appearance > themes > editor function.

Normal html tags to ignore programming comments don’t seem to be recognized (e.g. // or /* … */ )when I modify and existing file. However, pre-existing // or /* tags are recognized. The tags are read as text. For example:

Print this text
//Ignore this text
Print this too

Appears on the blog as:
Print this text//ignore this textPrint this text

I thought this was due to my text editor leaving residue, so I made the changes directly through the WP editor…no copying. The problem remained. Any ideas?

Below is a sample of actual code where the problem occurs (// Changed the name of the copyright holder):

</div>
<div id=”footer”>
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
<div> © <?php echo date(‘Y’); ?>
// Changed the name of the copyright holder
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