Re: joining lines efficiency?

[hbm]

Another option is the flip-flop operator: Read the file line-by-line, and don't print if between an opening expression and closing expression.

The general idea is print unless /<expr1>/ .. /<expr2>/, but here the slash and star need to be escaped.

while(<$fh>){
   print unless m{/[*]} .. m{[*]/};
}

[hdb]

While your proposal needs less memory, it can go wrong as well. Should the comment start or end on a line with code outside of the comments, the whole line and the code will be removed. The regex also needs to be more sophisticated to ignore "/*" ie should the characters be quoted.

[AnomalousMonk]

The regex also needs to ... ignore "/*" ie should the characters be quoted.

It should also handle stuff like this, which compiles and runs just fine:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <assert.h>

void main (int argc, char ** argv) {

    int x = 4;
    int y = 2;

    int * p = &y;

    assert(x/*p == 12345  /* p points to y */);

    printf("everything looks just fine \n");

    }