Question about substitution

Hi,

I was wondering if I could get some help. I need to understand how I can look through a file of source code like java or c and delete all comments in that file. I believe that it would look for // (comment) and /* (comment) */. I tried using sed but I couldnt get it to work. Thanks for any help you can give me.

I am trying to do this on the command line if possible but I am unsure that I can do that, if not, I only know csh scripting in case I need to create a script to accomplish this.

Why would you want to do this? Comments are good

Anyway, I'd look into using something like sed to to a search and replace for regular expressions /* -> */ and // -> newline.

--Simon

Thanks, I tried sed 's/[//*]/ /g' and that just gets rid of // and /* */ but nothing else. I am hoping to get some advice on how to delete what is after // and within /* and */ . Thanks.

The only problem that I have now is appending the text between /* and */. My code gets rid of the rest of the comments but doesnt work when /* is on one line and */ is on another. Any ideas on how to do that?

My code:

hmm.. maybe you could put a list of valid wildchars and include the newline specifier (probably \n)?

Something like: (a-zA-Z0-9\\n)*

lilian, all this are sed cmd (remember vi uses exactly the same)
The substitution order in the sed cmd-file IS RELEVANT
to delete any substring beginning by '//' use
s/\/\/.*//g
to delete any line containing '//' use
/\/\//d
to remove anything between '/*' and '*/' NOT on the same line, use
/\/\*/,/\*\//d
to remove anything between '/*' and '*/' ON the same line, use
s/\/\*.*\*\///g
not tested but should work