This still leaves you with the problem of writing your script. Let us restart from the beginning:

When you say you want to "remove comments" you have to know what such a comment constitutes: there must be a sequence of characters which start a comment and a sequence, which ends a comment. Consider the following (phantasy-) shell code:

Code:

#!/bin/myshell

some_command    # this is a comment

# this is a comment too
Is this still a comment?

other_command

Lets establish what starts a comment: the "#" sign obviously. And what ends it? The line end (which answers the question if the line 6 is a comment - it is not, because it is after the end of comment-end-marker).

Still there are some possible problems: What about comments in comments? Lines like this:

Code:

command  # comment # what status has this?

Or what about using the comment-start sequence quoted:

Code:

echo "something # is this a comment?"  # what about this?

or escaped:

Code:

echo "something" \# comment?

There is a certain class of programs designed to deal with these problems. They are called "parsers". These programs constitute the first part of a compiler, where the program code gets read, stripped of everything unnecessary (like comments, which the program doesn't need) and is syntax-checked. It all sounds quite complicated and "building compilers" sounds quite like high-level stuff, but this is astonishingly easy.

Lets take stock: we have a set of rules (what starts a comment, what ends a comment) and we have an action (filter the comments out). We saw above, that we need some more rules regarding the quoting and the escaping, let's go over the rules again:

Parsers do their work the following way: read in one character after the other. After each character decide if you have found a sequence with a rule attached to it. Finally, after applying all the applicable rules, output the result (if some rule doesn't forbid it).

In fact parsers are just while-loops reading one character after the other and long case-constructs, trying to apply one rule after the other to the character read. It is clear that we will have to maintain some status-flags when we are only to look at one character at a time. We will have to "remember" if we are inside a comment, inside a quoted string, etc..

How about you trying to write a program (in pseudo-code only, just the logic) for your problem and posting it. Then we will go over your solution and implement that in real code.

I hope this helps.

bakunin