in reply to Comment Stripper script for unix

I tried applying this script to itself. That was to check if significant uses of '#' were handled properly. The results were, uhhh . . . unfortunate.

  1. It stripped the shebang line, which doesn't look exotic at all.
  2. It did 
    -if ( $us eq "ee" ) { $comm = ';'; } else { $comm = '#'; }
+if ( $us eq "ee" ) { $comm = ';'; } else { $comm = '

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    leaving an unclosed quote in the code.
  3. It did 
    -   die(&pwarn($comm)) if $topline =~ /\#\!.*perl/i ;
+   die(&pwarn($comm)) if $topline =~ /\

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    leaving an open regex match.
  4. It did 
    -     if ( $topline =~ /(\s+)\#\!/ ) {
+     if ( $topline =~ /(\s+)\

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    to the same effect.

I think your e can only be applied in the simplest circumstances.

Don't feel too bad, the saying goes, "Only perl can parse Perl." To do this sort of thing properly really does require a parser.

After Compline,
Zaxo

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Re^2: Comment Stripper script for unix
by eserte (Deacon) on Jun 14, 2004 at 09:19 UTC
    Don't feel too bad, the saying goes, "Only perl can parse Perl." To do this sort of thing properly really does require a parser.
    ... or take a look at perltidy, which does a really good job on perl code formatting and also has a switch for stripping comments.
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Re^2: Comment Stripper script for unix
by hsinclai (Deacon) on Jun 14, 2004 at 11:55 UTC
    Whoa - that's terrible - obviously I didn't test it with Perl scripts enough - I only used it with config files and shell scripts really - way too hasty ...

    This plain doesn't work and should be removed from the code catacombs - you all are too kind! Or maybe moved to the "don't let this happen to you" section?

    I didn't know Perltidy removed comments, so thanks for that eserte.

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