Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!mucs!ian
From: ian@ux.cs.man.ac.uk (Ian Cottam)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: request for C comment stripper
Message-ID: <5695@ux.cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: 21 Mar 89 11:10:48 GMT
References: <5693@ux.cs.man.ac.uk> <985@philmds.UUCP>
Reply-To: ian@mucs.UUCP (Ian Cottam)
Organization: Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK
Lines: 24

In article <985@philmds.UUCP> leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit) writes:
>In article <5693@ux.cs.man.ac.uk> ian@ux.cs.man.ac.uk (Ian Cottam) writes:
>|
>|I usually use a lex script for such things....

>This will cover most ordinary cases; but not this one:
>
>[an include file...] (startcom.h is either empty or contains a /* ).

According to my understanding of the pANS C preprocessor and the
notion of a "translation unit", your example is erroneous as the
comment must be terminated within startcom.h.  (As a practical
man I also confirmed my suspicion with the help of gcc :-) )
However, I suspect someone can come up with a case that will
throw my lex script as comment-strippers always require more
thought than people can believe possible.

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