not the way ... (was Re: Want a way to strip comments from a)

[Leo de Wit]

In article <4221 at omepd.UUCP> merlyn at intelob.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge) writes:
   []
|Nope.  Just try it on the line:
|
|  foo; bar;  /* comment1 */  bletch; /* comment2 */
|
|'bletch;' disappears with the comments.
|
|The regexp that matches comments looks like (in egrep/lex notation):
|
|  [/][*]([*]*[^*/])*[*]+[/]
|
|(I use [X] here instead of \X because I hate backslashes...).
|
|Sed and vi are not powerful enough to eat things like this in one
|regexp.

Sed is often underestimated; it IS powerful enough:

s/\/\*\([^*/]*\*\)\1*\///g

will eat the comments away just nicely (I'll leave the HOW as an
exercise for the reader).

    Leo.