I posted this a bit ago in the regex section, but being unfamiliar with the quoting standards I mangled it a bit. Here it is (hopefully) in readable form.

I am trying to write a regex to remove the comments from lines but I want for people to be able to use the comment character in their input if they comment it ala. perl/c/java backslash metaquoting. I would like a regex to use like s/$regex/$1/ to remove the comments.

As it is I have been using the following (squished a bit to save room): 
$m = "\\";              # Meta
$c = "\#";              # Comment
print "Begin: $_\n";
split /\Q$c\E/;
$string = $_ = $_[0];   # Because split puts the first non-blank line 
+in $_
for($i = 1; $i <= $#_; $i++) {
  $_ = $_[$i - 1];
  (/((^|[^\Q$m\E])((\Q$m\E){2})*$)/) ? (last) : ($string .= "$c" . $_[
+$i]);
}
print "  End: $string\n";

[download]
And that has caught every test case I have made up, like: 
this is a line with a \# pound # and a comment
this is a \# line with three \#'\#'s # and a comment
this is a line \\\\ with shashes \\\\# and a comment
this is a line \\\\ with shashes \\\# and a pound # and a comment
#this line is only comment
\#this line begins with a pound
\\# This line begins with a slash
\# This line \# \\# has a pound at the beginning
Can anyone come up with a regex to do the same job?

Will

In reply to quoting characters by WHolcomb

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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