in reply to removing C style comments from text files

use Regexp::Common;
$string =~ s/$RE{comment}{C}//g;

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Note that this (just like the regexes presented in the rest of this thread) isn't context aware, and happily removes "comments" from strings.

Abigail

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Re: Re: removing C style comments from text files
by EdwardG (Vicar) on Jan 06, 2004 at 12:49 UTC

    I address this problem by replacing quoted strings with unique tags prior to removing the comments. After stripping the comments I then restore the original strings for those tags remaining (some may get stripped).

[reply]
      That's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem, isn't? How can you succesfully remove strings, if you can't detect comments? Consider: 
      /* One " two */ a = b + 4; /* three " four */

      [download]
      You have to do it all in one pass. Something like: 
      s { (     [^"'/]*                          # Not a string, character o
+r comment.
      |  "[^\\"]*(?:\\.[^\\"]*)*"          # String.
      |  '[^\\']*(?:\\.[^\\']*)*'          # Char.
      |  / (?![*])                         # Slash, not a comment.
    )
      |
    ( /[*] [^*]* (?: [*] [^*/]* )* [*]/ )  # Comment.
  }
  { $2 ? "" : $1 }gsex;

      [download]
      But that isn't fool proof either (consider # define).

      Abigail

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