comment_removal.py

import re

with open("hello_world.cpp", "r") as f:
	x = f.read()

o = open("hello_world_comment_removal.cpp", "w")
def remove_comments(string):

    pattern = r"(\".*?\"|\'.*?\')|(/\*.*?\*/|//[^\r\n]*$)"

    # first group captures quoted strings (double or single)
    # second group captures comments (//single-line or /* multi-line */)

    regex = re.compile(pattern, re.MULTILINE|re.DOTALL)

    def _replacer(match):
        # if the 2nd group (capturing comments) is not None,
        # it means we have captured a non-quoted (real) comment string.
        if match.group(2) is not None:
            return "" # so we will return empty to remove the comment
        else: # otherwise, we will return the 1st group
            return match.group(1) # captured quoted-string
    return regex.sub(_replacer, string)


o.write(remove_comments(x))
o.close()