Comment recognition in Lex, again

[anderson at uwvax.ARPA]

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I have received several replies to my request for a lex expression
to recognize /* ... */ comments.  The only one that works (sent in
by Jim Hogue) is

"/*"([^*]*"*"*"*"[^/*])*[^*]*"*"*"*/"

which I can't claim to fully understand.  Nor do I understand why my
original,  "/*"([^*]|("*"/[^/]))*"*/", doesn't work.  The idea is that
each character in the string between /* and */ can either be something
other than *, or * followed by something other than /.

Can anyone come up with an expression simpler than Hogue's that works?
By "works", I mean put it in a real "lex" program, as in:

(your expr)	printf("recognized (%s)\n",yytext);

and try it on inputs such as /***/, /*/*/, etc.

-- David Anderson (uwvax!anderson)