Ytdyklly

I'm trying to convert single line 'C' style comments to 'C++' style. The 'sed' below isn't bad, but of course it fails if any leading code (code before the comment) has any ' / ' in it at all:

sed -i 's,(^[^/]*)/*([^*]*)*/[ ]*$,1//2,' filename

What I wish I could do is this:

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

i.e. negate ' /* ' which doesn't work of course, but after several hours of searching, I can't find a simple explanation of how to do that properly :( It doesn't seem like it should be rocket science.

For example, these strings:

blah blah        /* comment */

blah blah / blah /* comment */

blah blah        /* comment */ blah

blah blah / blah /* comment */ blah 

... should convert thusly:

blah blah        // comment 

blah blah / blah // comment 

blah blah        /* comment */ blah  (this CAN'T be converted)

blah blah / blah /* comment */ blah  (this CAN'T be converted)

... obviously no conversion can take place if there is code AFTER the 'C' comment.

I will do a close visual comparison between the file, before and after, so there's no need to handle ' /* ' inside a literal, nor do I want to convert anything multi-line.

Note I think of this as a 'negation' problem but maybe there is another way. I just need to capture everything before a ' /* ' and I don't care how.

FOLLOW UP ON ANSWER BELOW

Well damn! I see that I've completely misunderstood something fundamental:

.*/*

... reads: "anything except slash star followed by slash star", so actually I get my 'negation' for free :-)

So, going even further than Barmar:

sed -i 's,^(.*)/*(.*)*/s*$,1//2,' filename

... will even catch this:

blah / * blah        /* co / mme * nt */

and output this:

blah / * blah       // co / mme * nt 

Enlightenment.

Try this:

sed 's,^(.*)/*([^/]*)*/$,1//2,'

This won't convert comments that contain embedded / characters. Alternatively, you could use:

sed 's,^(.*)/*(.*)*/$,1//2,'

This will do the wrong thing if you have two comments on the same line, e.g.

blah blah        /* comment1 */ blah /* comment2 */

will convert to

blah blah       // comment1 */ blah /* comment2

It might be possible to do better with a PCRE version of sed, as you could then use negative lookahead to test for embedded comments.

Note also that using , as the delimiter in the s command means that you don't have to escape all the / characters in the regexp -- that's the point of using some character other than / as the delimiter when the regexp will contain lots of /.

Probably the safest way is to first test for lines you don't want to affect and branch out of the script if you have a match.

sed '|*/.*/*|b'

That's a little hard to read with all of the *stars in there, but basically if /* occurs after */ sed will quit executing its script, autoprint the line, and pull in the next line to begin the next line cycle. Any commands following that are not executed for a matching line.

Another way to do this is with test, which will similarly branch out of a script if it is provided no branch label following a successful s///ubstitution:

sed 's|/*|&|2;t'

That attempts to replace the second occurrence of the pattern on the line with itself, and, if successful, it branches out in the same manner b does.

And so...

sed 's|/*|&|2;s|*/|&|2;t

     s|/*(.*)*/ *$|//1|'

...will replace the first and only occurrence of /* with // on lines which end with the first and only occurrence of */ and any amount of trailing space characters. This works because t applies to any substitution occurring before it, and so if one or the other tests successful, sed branches out.

It may be that I blunder here, though, as I'm not very familiar with C or C++ and am uncertain what might happen in a /*.**/.**/ case - which the above script branches away from . Perhaps you should instead be testing for only 2 */ or only 2 /*. Hopefully, at least though, I have managed to convey the concept to one who knows better.

I happened to need the above - but also multiline - so I merged Barmar's answer with some sed of my own to achieve this

sed -e '//*/,/*//{s/^( *)/*/1~~/g;s/^( *) *//1~~/g;s/^( *) */1~~/g;s/~~////g};s/**////g;s,^(.*)/*(.*)*/s*$,1//2,'

(BTW if on a mac, you need gsed else you will get an error from the above)

Here is a diff before/after

***************

*** 1,13 ****



! /*

     FOO

!  */



! /*

!  * BAR

!  */



! blah blah        /* comment */

! blah blah / blah /* comment */

  blah blah        /* comment */ blah

  blah blah / blah /* comment */ blah

--- 1,13 ----



! //

     FOO

! //



! //

! // BAR

! //



! blah blah        // comment

! blah blah / blah // comment

  blah blah        /* comment */ blah

  blah blah / blah /* comment */ blah