Regex Pal

Dan's Tools

Remove comments from code files

This regular expression will remove most single line and block comments from code files. In order to allow URLs to remain unscathed, you must use back reference $1 in the replacement.

Comments

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