G'day Aldebaran,

" can't figure out why the shebang and comments endure: ... How is my regex not sieving out the comments?"

Your regex, /^#*$/, is anchored at the start (^) and end ($). Consider: 

$ perl -E '
    my $x = "#shebang\n\nstatement1\n#comment\nstatement2";
    my @lines = split /\n/, $x;

    say "All lines:";
    say for @lines;
    say "-" x 40;

    say "Your regex:";
    say for grep ! /^#*$/, @lines;
    say "-" x 40;

    say "Better regex:";
    say for grep ! /^#/, @lines;
    say "-" x 40;
'
All lines:
#shebang

statement1
#comment
statement2
----------------------------------------
Your regex:
#shebang
statement1
#comment
statement2
----------------------------------------
Better regex:

statement1
statement2
----------------------------------------

[download]

Note how your regex is removing blank lines. Did you want that?

Addendum: If the answer to that last question is yes, you can use /^(?:#|$)/.

— Ken

In reply to Re^3: wrapping bash and astronomy by kcott
in thread wrapping bash and astronomy by Aldebaran

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