PERIOD comments a statement

Rule "dotcomment" gives this warning when it finds a
statement that begins with a period, for example:

.MESSAGE "hello"
   VIEW-AS ALERT-BOX.

Such a statement behaves like a comment (that is terminated by the next period).
So the MESSAGE in this example will never execute.

the risc:

The period is easily overlooked, and not too many people
know that it starts a comment. Prolint will raise a warning because it regards the dot (or period) as a
typo or as something that was accidently inserted,
perhaps by preprocessors.

how to solve this:

Remove the period, or remove the entire statement, or
use the usual /* ... */ syntax if you really want to
comment out the statement.

How to suppress these warnings:

You can put the directive {&_proparse_ prolint-nowarn(dotcomment)} directly before
the statement. See also: suppress warnings.