Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2017 September 26

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September 26

Regex: How to delete all comments and all that comes after them in a row?

I tried this:

 ?^# *

To delete all commets starting with #space (and that might be preceded by a space).

It does delete them, but not everything coming after them in the same row. Ben-Yeudith (talk) 06:34, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Try "^ ?# .*" based on your description, if a comment is always on its own line. The last two characters (.*) means 'everything'. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 07:11, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, sadly this seems to delete everything in the file, not only comments. Ben-Yeudith (talk) 07:19, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Depending on how you open the file, ".*" will usually match newline characters as well. ^ ?# [^\n]* could work (I have not tested it) ([^\n] means "any non-newline character"). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 11:05, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm far too used to multiline. There may be an option for 'multiline mode' in your editor or particular language, possibly /m or (?m), which would make the expression "(?m)^ ?# .*" -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 11:43, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

If you want to express " lines that begins with # or with space and #" that won't be

?^

This

^

matches the beginning, there's nothing before the beginning, optional or not. Make the space optional.B8-tome (talk) 12:20, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

The following worked. Thanks.

# [^\n]*

Ben-Yeudith (talk) 13:27, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

That works as long as '#' does not appear on non-comment lines. If you get any code line with '#' in it, it will be deleted too. Just apply a regexp that exactly defines what a valid comment is.B8-tome (talk) 13:57, 26 September 2017 (UTC)