Stripping Comments

hangon has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I need to strip comments from a configuration file. The comments start with # and go to the end of the line, unless the initial # is escaped. This is what I have:

while (my $line = <FH>){

    $line =~ s/[^\\]#.*//;
    $line =~ s/^#.*//;
    $line =~ s/\\#/#/g;

    print "$line";
}
[download]

The second regex is to handle cases where the line begins with #. The third just removes the escape character. This works, but is there a better way or can it be simplified with with fewer regexes? Thanks.

sample data:

\#Not a comment
#Comment
\#Not a comment  #But this is a comment
arbitrary text   #Comment     
arbitrary text   \#Not a comment
arbitrary text   \#Not a comment  #But this is a comment
arbitrary text   #Comment         \#This is part of the comment
[download]

desired output:

#Not a comment

#Not a comment
arbitrary text
arbitrary text   #Not a comment
arbitrary text   #Not a comment  
arbitrary text
[download]

UPDATE: Got what I needed, and a little education too. Thanks for the help everyone.

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