in reply to Multi Line c comments

Update: This code, as pointed out below, will not work if the text in the comment contains any asterisks.

See How do I use a regular expression to strip C style comments from a file? for a regexp that will work in all cases.

I am pretty sure that this would work: 
$text =~ s|\/\*[^\*]*\*\/||;

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Breaking that down a bit (i can appreciate how it might just look like a bunch of asterisks and slashes, but i guess that's probably a good thing as far as your obfuscation goes ;-): 
$text =~ s|
              \/\*       # '/*', escaped
                [^\*]*   # 0 or more non-'*' characters
              \*\/       # '*/', escaped
          ||x;

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RE: RE: Multi Line c comments
by $code or die (Deacon) on Nov 15, 2000 at 23:48 UTC
    Hmm. Not sure about this. I seem to remember that getting rid of C comments was a pain - Death to Dot Star. Specifically Merlin's Post and Ovid's Responses to that thread.

    I know there is no dot-star in that regex, and it uses negative character classes but I am worried that it might fall into the same trap as the ones in the above nodes. I suppose, I could try it to see.

    e.g. is this a valid C comment: 
    /* This my comment It spans a couple*
of lines. 

* actually it spans 5 lines but it has
3 *s in it */

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    It seems to me that the above regex won't work here. Maybe it's not valid C comment.

    Actually, I don't know what I'm talking about - I have been stuck at work today for too long - I just needed to node. I am going for a break.
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[d/l]
RE (tilly) 2: Multi Line c comments
by tilly (Archbishop) on Nov 15, 2000 at 23:54 UTC
    I am a little scared, considering that this is a FAQ, how many people are getting it wrong.

    This has a very common failure mode that looks like this: 

    
  /*****************************************
   * Script Foo                            *
   * Written by "I like pretty comments"   *
   * The purpose of this is...             *
   * etc/and more...                       *
   ******************************************/

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    This fairly generic example (and common variations) will defeat most simplistic attempts at this problem. :-)

    (See the FAQ for more.)

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[d/l]
      You are correct, my regexp was naive and wrong; and not remembering something in the faq is pretty inexcusable :-(
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