Multiple line to single line comment find & replace

Question

what's the quickest way for me, in VSCode, to find and replace a comment structured like this:

/**
 * Comment here
 */

With:

// Comment here

Bearing in mind here the actual comment itself should persist, so just the comment syntax being changed.

I'm hoping there is an easy find & replace operation I haven't come across before that I can perform in the editor.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Unless there is a vscode command to toggle a doc comment (which would make this much easier) you can do it with an extension that can run multiple finds and replaces and commands.

Using Find and Transform, an extension I wrote, make this keybinding (in your keybindings.json):

{
  "key": "alt+s",                   // whatever keybinding you want 
  "command": "findInCurrentFile",
  "args": {
    // 2 finds and 2 replaces
    "find": ["(^[ \t]*\\/\\*\\*\n)([\\s\n\\S]*?)(^\\s*\\*\\/\n)", "^([ \t]*) \\*\\s*(.*)"],
    "replace": ["$2", "$1$2"],

    "isRegex": true,
    "cursorMoveSelect": "$1$2",      // select the result for the postCommands to act on
    "postCommands": ["editor.action.commentLine", "cancelSelection"]
  },
}

The first find captures the entire jdoc-style comment and keeps only the interior lines. The second find and replace removes the leading * from those lines.

The result is then selected so that the postCommands can be run adding line comments.

[I didn't spend a lot of time on the regex's so double-check those.]