in reply to joining lines efficiency?

Matching C-style comments is very tricky: How do I use a regular expression to strip C style comments from a file?

Or go easy on yourself and use File::Comments (but it says about C: "Implemented with regular expressions, only works for easy cases until real parsers are employed").

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

My blog: Imperial Deltronics

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom