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Hi,

I want to strip a JAVA file of /* */ like comments. Unfortunately, the
simple regexp "\/\*.*\*\/" only works on comments, that are on one line.
Is there a simple way to remove comments that go across several lines with
python regexp's? I tried re.M to no avail.

Thanks,
Viktor

Viktor Rosenfeld <- wrote:

> I want to strip a JAVA file of /* */ like comments. Unfortunately, the
> simple regexp "\/\*.*\*\/" only works on comments, that are on one line.
> Is there a simple way to remove comments that go across several lines with
> python regexp's? I tried re.M to no avail.

You must use re.S

,----[ Python lib reference ]
| `S'
|
| `DOTALL'
| Make the `.' special character match any character at all,
| including a newline; without this flag, `.' will match anything
| _except_ a newline.
`----


KP

--
Männer der Wissenschaft! Man sagt ihr viele nach,
aber die meisten mit Unrecht.
Karl Kraus 'Aphorismen'

Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I want to strip a JAVA file of /* */ like comments. Unfortunately, the
> simple regexp "\/\*.*\*\/" only works on comments, that are on one line.
> Is there a simple way to remove comments that go across several lines with
> python regexp's? I tried re.M to no avail.
>
> Thanks,
> Viktor

Viktor,

Supply the DOTALL flag during the regular expression compile as
described here: http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/re-syntax.html

You will also want to make the regular expression non-greedy...the
reasons are quite evident.

>>> import re
>>> import pprint
>>>
>>> st = """
.... /* this is a
.... multi-line comment */
....
.... /* this is a single-line comment */
....
.... /* this /* has multiple
.... starts */
.... """
#non-greedy matching
>>> NonGreedy = re.compile("\/\*.*?\*\/", re.DOTALL)
>>>
>>> pprint.pprint(NonGreedy.findall(st))
['/* this is a\nmulti-line comment */',
'/* this is a single-line comment */',
'/* this /* has multiple\nstarts */']

#greedy matching
>>> Greedy = re.compile("\/\*.*\*\/", re.DOTALL)
>>> pprint.pprint(Greedy.findall(st))
['/* this is a\nmulti-line comment */\n\n/* this is a single-line
comment */\n\n/* this /* has multiple\nstarts */']

- Josiah

Viktor Rosenfeld wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to strip a JAVA file of /* */ like comments. Unfortunately, the
> simple regexp "\/\*.*\*\/" only works on comments, that are on one line.
> Is there a simple way to remove comments that go across several lines with
> python regexp's? I tried re.M to no avail.

Something like:

import re
pattern = re.compile("/\*.*?\*/", re.MULTILINE|re.DOTALL)
stripped_data = pattern.sub("", data)

Note that I added a ? to the regex, so it won't be "greedy".

HTH,

--
Hans ()
http://zephyrfalcon.org/

Thanks to all that were quick to answer, using re.DOTALL indeed solves the
problem. I was too tired to read the documentation correctly.

Ciao,
Viktor