All you basically need to do is 1) strip the comments and then 2) strip the newlines. You have to remove the comments otherwise everything after the first comment will be a comment when you remove the newlines. Finally wrap with perl -e 'code'.

Finding comments is somewhat harder than you may imagine as the humble pound sign can occur in many contexts. These are:

1. ) In string context bare or within single or double quotes ' ` ``
   
2. ) In string context within the q qq qx qw qr constructs
   
3. ) As the string delimiter for the above constructs
   
4. ) In literal context within regular expressions
   
5. ) As the delimiter for regular expressions
   
6. ) In $# context usually seen in for(0..$#array) construct but also $#
   
7. ) And yes also as the comment token!
   

You will find a fairly reliable solution here that does 1 and 2 for you.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print