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Dan's Tools

Remove inline/block comments from code files

This regular expression removes most single line and block comments from code files. Please note that the character preceding single line comments is save in back reference $1. You must use this back reference in your replacement value instead of an empty string. Follow its progress on stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5989315/regex-for-match-replacing-javascript-comments-both-multiline-and-inline/15123777#15123777

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Top Regular Expressions

Cheat Sheet

Character classes
. any character except newline
\w \d \s word, digit, whitespace
\W \D \S not word, digit, whitespace
[abc] any of a, b, or c
[^abc] not a, b, or c
[a-g] character between a & g
Anchors
^abc$ start / end of the string
\b word boundary
Escaped characters
\. \* \\ escaped special characters
\t \n \r tab, linefeed, carriage return
\u00A9 unicode escaped ©
Groups & Lookaround
(abc) capture group
\1 backreference to group #1
(?:abc) non-capturing group
(?=abc) positive lookahead
(?!abc) negative lookahead
Quantifiers & Alternation
a* a+ a? 0 or more, 1 or more, 0 or 1
a{5} a{2,} exactly five, two or more
a{1,3} between one & three
a+? a{2,}? match as few as possible
ab|cd match ab or cd