Hello Monks, I'm a bit baffled by a disappearing string. Maybe someone can offer some insight. I have a a multi-line string that MAY have embedded full line comments from the start of the string. I want to remove the comments. Here is a sample:

my $string = "--This is a comment\n--This Comment continues here\nNOT a comment";

My desired output is: $string = "NOT a comment"

But when I run my code, I get $string = "--This Comment continues here" 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#use strict;

my $count = 1;
my $string = "--This is a comment\n--This Comment continues here\nNOT 
+a comment";

while( $string =~ m/^--.*\n(.*)/ ) {
    #Debug Output
    print "ORIGINAL $count: $string\n****\n";    

    $string = $1;

    #Debug Output
    print "\n+++\nMODIFIED $count: $string\n";    
    $count++;
}

print "DONE $count: $string\n";    

exit;

__OUTPUT__
+++
MODIFIED 1: --This Comment continues here
DONE 2: --This Comment continues here

C:\temp>perl strip.pl
ORIGINAL 1: --This is a comment
--This Comment continues here
NOT a comment
****

+++
MODIFIED 1: --This Comment continues here
DONE 2: --This Comment continues here

C:\temp>perl strip.pl
ORIGINAL 1: --This is a comment
--This Comment continues here
NOT a comment
****

+++
MODIFIED 1: --This Comment continues here
DONE 2: --This Comment continues here

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In reply to Removing nested comments with regexes by Anonymous Monk

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