Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!husc6!ogccse!littlei!omepd!merlyn
From: merlyn@intelob.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: not the way ... (was Re: Want a way to strip comments from a)
Message-ID: <4221@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 16 Mar 89 22:37:19 GMT
References: <7150@siemens.UUCP> <9900010@bradley>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: merlyn@intelob.intel.com (Randal L. Schwartz @ Stonehenge)
Organization: Stonehenge; netaccess via BiiN, Hillsboro, Oregon, USA
Lines: 33
In-reply-to: brian@bradley.UUCP

In article <9900010@bradley>, brian@bradley writes:
| >                          Does anyone have a sed or awk script which we
| > can use to preprocess the C source and get rid of all the comments before
| > sending it to the compiler?
| 
|   The following works in vi: :%s/\/\*.*\*\///g
| 
|   I don't know if it will work in sed, but it should...

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.

Didn't we just go through this about nine months ago? :-)
(And didn't I give the wrong answer at least twice? :-) :-)
-- 
Randal L. Schwartz, Stonehenge Consulting Services (503)777-0095
on contract to BiiN (for now :-), Hillsboro, Oregon, USA.
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