c++ccomments

Remove comments from C/C++ code

Is there an easy way to remove comments from a C/C++ source file without doing any preprocessing. (ie, I think you can use gcc -E but this will expand macros.) I just want the source code with comments stripped, nothing else should be changed.

EDIT:

Preference towards an existing tool. I don't want to have to write this myself with regexes, I foresee too many surprises in the code.

Solution

  • Run the following command on your source file:

    gcc -fpreprocessed -dD -E -P test.c

    Thanks to KennyTM for finding the right flags. Here’s the result for completeness:

    test.c:

    #define foo bar
foo foo foo
#ifdef foo
#undef foo
#define foo baz
#endif
foo foo
/* comments? comments. */
// c++ style comments

    gcc -fpreprocessed -dD -E -P test.c:

    #define foo bar
foo foo foo
#ifdef foo
#undef foo
#define foo baz
#endif
foo foo