Regular expression query !!should be a good one

[Deepak_5]

Hi,

I have a definition in my file

int func(/* sdsd*/int a, /*deep*/char b);

I need to change it to
int func( int a, char b);
or
int func(int a,char b);

Basically, I need to get rid of the comments in the line.

Is there a regular expression substitution for this.
Also Note in "vi" I tried:
:%s/\/\*.*\*\///g

I tired may other patterns with "(" and ")" stuff, but somehow did not work.

Got any idea, please let me know.

Thanks and Regards
Deepak

[Volker Borowski]

Deepaq,

you just provided one DOT. So only any comment consisting of a single char will be replaced.

I am not so deep in regexps, but I would try

%s/\/\*.\*\///g
%s/\/\*..\*\///g
%s/\/\*...\*\///g
and so on (yes, not very sophisticated)...

Volker

[Robin Wakefield · Accepted solution]

%s/\/\*[^\*]*\*\///g

should do it.

Robin

[Thierry Poels_1]

Hi,

:%s;/\*[^\*]*\*/;;g
or
:%g;func;s;/\*[^\*]*\*/;;g (for only the lines containing "func")

should work too; by replacing the seperator by ";" you don't need to escape the "/" in your search.

BTW: s;/\*.*\*/;... will replace everyting between the first "/*" and the last "*/" on a line !!

regards,
Thierry.

[Deepak_5]

Hi ,

The seems to be some problem, my commets cannot have '*' or '/'
e.g.
int func1( /* *sdf */ int *a ,/* */int b);
This is a valid C statement.

Can Anyone handle this as well ?

Thanks and Regards
Deepak

[Thierry Poels_1]

hmmz,
:%s;/\*[^/]*\*/;;g
will allow "*" in your comments, but no "/" :)
So if you run both substitutes, everything should be OK.

:%s;/\*[a-bA-Z0-9*/.:\; ]*\*/;;g
will do the trick in one step, add any character you need between the square brackets.

good luck,
Thierry.

[Deepak_5]

Thanks Theiry,but
:%s;/\*[a-bA-Z0-9*/.:\; ]*\*/;;g

did not work fine for me .
e.g. int func1( /* sdf / *ddd */ int *a ,int b);
is the input.

There has to be way..

Thanks and Regards
Deepak

[Rodney Hills]

Most regular expressions are greedy (matching as much as possible). Perl5 has an option to a reg expr to match a minimum. So try the following-

perl -p -i -e 's{/\*.*?\*/}{}' yourprog.c

The .*? will only match until the FIRST */ is found.

[David Totsch]

Deepak:

try this with sed(1):

/func/ s#\(^.*\)\(\/\*..*\*\/\)\(.*\)\(\/\*..*\*\/\)\(.*$\)#\1 \3 \5#g

\(^.*\) starts matching the front
of input lines
\(\/\*..*\*\/\) matches the comment you
want to discard (at least
one character e.g. "/* */")
\(.*\) captures the text between
comments
\(\/\*..*\*\/\) matches the second comment
WARNING: _requires_ second cmnt
\(.*$\) captures text up to the end
of the line

\1 \3 \5 recalls what was matched by
those parenthetical statements
numbered starting with 1 from
left to right

Again, this statement will "hit" only on lines
that have two embedded comments.

Enjoy,
-dlt-

[someone_4]

If anyone is still reading this post.
Can someone tell me what you are talking about?

thanks

Richard