How to filter out c-type comments with regex?

Question

I'm trying to filter out "c-style" comments in a line so i'm only left with the words (or actual code).

This is what i have so far: demo

regex:

\/\*[^\/]*[^\*]*\*\/

text:

/* 1111 */ one /*2222*/two /*3333 */ three/* 4444*/ four /*/**/ five /**/

Answer 1

We can try doing a regex replacement on the following pattern:

/\*.*?\*/

This matches any old-school C style comment. It works by using a lazy dot .*? to match only content within a single comment, before the end of that comment. We can then replace with empty string, to effectively remove these comments from the input.

Code:

Dim input As String = "/* 1111 */ one /*2222*/two /*3333 */ three/* 4444*/ four /*/**/ five /**/"
Dim output As String = Regex.Replace(input, "/\*.*?\*/", "")
Console.WriteLine(input)
Console.WriteLine(output)

This prints:

one two  three four  five