Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!ig!arizona!rupley
From: rupley@arizona.edu (John Rupley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: not the way ... (was Re: Want a way to strip comments from a)
Summary: close but no cigar
Message-ID: <9881@megaron.arizona.edu>
Date: 25 Mar 89 03:45:06 GMT
References: <7150@siemens.UUCP> <9900010@bradley> <4221@omepd.UUCP> <1492@wpi.wpi.edu>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 27


In article <1492@wpi.wpi.edu>, lfoard@wpi.wpi.edu (Lawrence C Foard) writes:
> I tried the comment stripper I poster earlier today on these pathological
> cases and it seems to get the right answer.

Close, but no cigar.  

We're talking real pathology, here.... try:
	(echo '/*';yes '*//*';echo 'cosmetic */') | stripper_name
Recursion blows the stack for your program.  Previously posted strippers
handle the above.

If you insist on a compilable file, use a script to produce:
        /*
        [stack-blowing number of lines of *//*]
        */
        compilable program text

Why strip comments? (1) the original poster had a broken compiler that choked
on comments; (2) the start of a cheap way to get a list or inverted index of
identifiers (cpp does too much).

I suspect all useful points (and more? :-) have been made about
comment stripping -- perhaps this thread should die now.

John Rupley
rupley!local@megaron.arizona.edu