The problem you are working on is a bit more complicated than what you can do in a simple regexp.

Abigail

Hmm.. i see.. your rigth!

But can i put this condition in while cicle!!? I guess not because in that case i could not catch multiline comments!! Because in this case the file would be read line by line! And i must read all the file at once! Donīt i?

Thank you again

Put which condition in which while cycle? There's no while in your code fragment.

Which part of "what you are trying to do is to complex for a simple regexp" do you fail to understand?

I've said this before, what you need is a parser, nor a regexp. For simple languages like Java, you can get away with a parser that's not a full-language parser. I told you this three weeks ago, but you still are on the regexp road, and have made remarkably little progress.

Don't match - parse!

Abigail

my $file="Finger.java";
my %comments=();
open(F,"<$file") or die "Can't open $file: $!";
while(defined($_=<F>)){
 $comments{$.}=$_ if( m{...PUT THE MATCH YOU NEED HERE...} );
}
close(F);
[download]

use strict;
my $slurpedfile = 
q{Blah blah blah
blah blah Blah // single line c++ comment
more blahs "quoted string with /* " blah
blah blah blah /* single line c comment */ blah
blah blah /*
    multi line 
    c style comment */
some more blahs
// another single line c++ comment
blah blah blah
};
my @matches =  $slurpedfile =~
m{
     ( /\* .*? \*/) | ( \/\/[^\n]*)           
     | " (?: [^"\\]* | \\. )* "               
     | ' (?: [^'\\]* | \\. )* '               
     | . [^/"']*                              
   }xgs;
@matches = grep {defined $_} @matches; #get rid of undefs
my $linenum = 1;
foreach my $match (@matches) {
        $slurpedfile =~ /\Q$match/;
        my $before = $`;
        $slurpedfile = $';
        my $matched = $&;
        $linenum += $before =~ tr/\n/\n/;
        print "$match\n is on line $linenum\n\n";
        $linenum += $match =~ tr/\n/\n/;
}
__OUTPUT__
// single line c++ comment
 is on line 2

/* single line c comment */
 is on line 4

/*
        multi line
        c style comment */
 is on line 5

// another single line c++ comment
 is on line 9
[download]

comment = ' /* comment */ ';
/* comment */
[download]

--

flounder

Thank you very much for your help!

Your code works fine with the variable.. but when i try to read a file, the number of the lines are wrong!

For example if i put the content of your variable $sluperdfile and add only one line such as //Hello:

#Content of the file test.txt
Blah blah blah
//Hello
blah blah Blah // single line c++ comment
more blahs "quoted string with /* " blah
blah blah blah /* single line c comment */ blah
blah blah /*
    multi line
    c style comment */
some more blahs
// another single line c++ comment
blah blah blah
[download]

And now the source code:

use strict;

undef $/;#In order to read the whole file at once
open(F,"test.txt");

my @matches =  <F> =~
m{
     ( /\* .*? \*/) | ( \/\/[^\n]*)
     | " (?: [^"\\]* | \\. )* "
     | ' (?: [^'\\]* | \\. )* '
     | . [^/"']*
   }xgs;
@matches = grep {defined $_} @matches; #get rid of undefs
my $linenum = 1;

foreach my $match (@matches) {

        $slurpedfile =~ /\Q$match/;
        my $before = $`;
        $slurpedfile = $';
        my $matched = $&;
        $linenum += $before =~ tr/\n/\n/;
        print "Line $linenum\t$match\n";
        $linenum += $match =~ tr/\n/\n/;
}
[download]

How can i grab the line numbers correctly! What variable should i put instead of $slurpedfile? According that i want to read directly from a file?

And another issue.. Is it possible to the output be something like this:

Line 12        //Hello
Line 23        // single line c++ comment
Line 34        /* single line c comment */
Line 45        /*
Line 46          multi line
Line 47                  c style comment */
Line 58        // another single line c++ comment
[download]

Instead of:

Line 12        //Hello
Line 23        // single line c++ comment
Line 34        /* single line c comment */
Line 45        /*
    multi line
    c style comment */
Line 58        // another single line c++ comment
[download]

Thank you.. for your help...

Nuno

Try this:

use strict;

undef $/;#In order to read the whole file at once
open(F,"test.txt") or die $!;
my $slurpedfile = <F>;
close F;
my @matches =  $slurpedfile =~
m{
     ( /\* .*? \*/) | ( \/\/[^\n]*)
     | " (?: [^"\\]* | \\. )* "
     | ' (?: [^'\\]* | \\. )* '
     | . [^/"']*
   }xgs;

@matches = grep {defined $_} @matches; #get rid of undefs
my $linenum = 1;

foreach my $match (@matches) {

        $slurpedfile =~ /\Q$match/;
        my $before = $`;
        $slurpedfile = $';
        $linenum += $before =~ tr/\n/\n/;

        foreach (split "\n", $match) {
            print "Line $linenum\t$_\n";
            $linenum++;
        }
        $linenum--;  # the foreach above adds one too many
}

__OUTPUT__
Line 2  //Hello
Line 3  // single line c++ comment
Line 5  /* single line c comment */
Line 6  /*
Line 7      multi line
Line 8      c style comment */
Line 10 // another single line c++ comment
[download]

--

flounder

That said here is a sample input file with a few interesting possibilities (yes it compiles):

/**
 *  The HelloWorldApp Class impliments an application that displays "H
+ello World!" to standard output
 */
public class HelloWorldApp
 {
    public static void main (String[] args)
    {
       // Display "Hello World!"
       System.out.println("Hello World!"); // end of line comment
       System.out.println("Hello World!"); /* end of line comment */
       System.out.println("Hello World!/*"); /* end of line comment */
/* this
is
a
multi
line
comment
*/
/* another comment */
// /* is this a valid comment
/*
//  */
       System.out.println("//Hello World!/*"); // is /* this valid
    }
 }
[download]

Below is some rough code to start grabbing comments. Coding for the cute exceptions is left as an exercise for the student (I hava always wanted to use that line, since it was used on me a long time ago) or as future discussion points. It prints the line number of the file where the comment begins and then the comment.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
my $infile = "HelloWorldApp.java";
my %linehash;
my $linecounter =0;
my $comment_started = 0;
my $multiline_comment;
open in, "$infile" or die "could not open $infile\n";
while (<in>)
{
## you may need to get creative in matching comments
## because java allows some fun combinations - see HelloWorld
##
## grab single line comments first else look for multiline
  if (/\/\/.*\n/ || /\/\*.*\*\//)
  {
     $linehash{$linecounter} = $_;
  }
  else
  {
## possible multiline comment start
    if ($comment_started)
    {
      $multiline_comment = $multiline_comment . $_;
## don't mess with $_ as later comparisons may need the newline in pla
+ce
      chomp $multiline_comment;
      $multiline_comment = $multiline_comment . " ";
##  end of multiline comment
      if (/\*\//)
      {
        $linehash{$comment_started} = $multiline_comment;
        $comment_started = 0;
        $multiline_comment = "";
      }
    }
## start multiline comment
    if (/\/\*/)
    {
      $comment_started=$linecounter;
    }
  }
  $linecounter++;
}
my @keys = sort{$a <=> $b}(keys(%linehash));
for (@keys)
{
  print "key=$_   value=$linehash{$_}";
}
[download]

Enjoy
John

Your code is very good.. thank you.. and if i had it a few weaks earlier it migtht have been a very good option for my program

But the other regex works just fine and catches all the cases! And is simply "changable" in order to serve to other languages as PLSQL, ProC, etc..

The only problem that i have is how to catch the number of lines!!

Iīve made some code in order to compare two files and it works "almost"* fine but in larger files it might be a bit slow!!

I said that almost works fine because it "flips over" when he finds lines like this /*********************/ !!! And i donīt have any idea why!!!

Maybe you can help me out to figurate out what is the problem!!!

foreach my $line (@fich){
  $i++;
  $flag=0;
  foreach $comm (@com){
        if( (($line eq $comm) || (index($line, $comm) > -1)) && ($flag
+==0)){
        print"Linha $i: $comm";
        $flag=1;
        print "Flag1: $flag\n";
       }
  }
}
[download]

The two arrays contain two files!!The @com contains the file with the extracted comments and the @fich contains the content of the source code!!

Thank you very much!!

Nuno

This will give you the correct line number count. counting the newlines in the matched set isn't what you want, unless I misunderstood your code. - slurped file into variable $f and changed reference of $slurpedfile to the original input file.

hth
John

#!/usr/bin/perl
$file="theinputfile";
undef $/; #In order to read the whole file at once
open(F,"$file");
$f = <F>;
my @matches =  $f =~
m{
     ( /\* .*? \*/) | ( \/\/[^\n]*)
     | " (?: [^"\\]* | \\. )* "
     | ' (?: [^'\\]* | \\. )* '
     | . [^/"']*
   }xgs;
@matches = grep {defined $_} @matches; #get rid of undefs
my $linenum = 1;

foreach my $match (@matches) {
#        $slurpedfile =~ /\Q$match/;
        $f =~ /\Q$match/;
        my $before = $`;
#        $slurpedfile = $';
        $f = $';
        my $matched = $&;
        $linenum += $before =~ tr/\n/\n/;
        print "Line $linenum\t$match\n";
        $linenum += $match =~ tr/\n/\n/;
}
[download]

my $match;
my $line;
while(<F>) {
  if(m{/\*} .. m{\*/}) {
    ## single line
    if(m{(/\*.*?\*/)}) {
      $match = $1;
      $line = $.;
      $hash{$line} = $match;
      #print "Line $line: Got match '$match'\n";
    } else {
      ## multi-line
      if( m{(/\*.*)} ) {
        ## Initial line '/*'
        $match = $1 . "\n"; 
        $line = $.; # record this line number
      } elsif( m{(.*\*/)} ) {
        ## Final line '*/'
        $match .= $1;
        $line = $.;
        $hash{$line} = $match;
        #print "Line $line: Got match '$match'\n";
        $match = undef;
        $line = undef;
      } else {
        # We are between lines, and have no /* or */
        $match .= $_;
      }
    }
  } elsif ( m{(//.*)\Z} ) {
    $match = $1;
    $line = $.;
    $hash{$line} = $match;
    #print "Line $line: Got match '$match'\n";
  } 
}
[download]

Thank you very much once again!!

You all have been very helpfull!!

Your advices help me a lot!!

Thanks

Nuno