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Question

Best way to automatically remove comments from PHP code

Answer 1

A:

The catch is that a less robust matching algorithm (simple regex, for instance) will start stripping here when it clearly shouldn't:

if (preg_match('#^/*' . $this->index . '#', $this->permalink_structure)) {

It might not affect your code, but eventually someone will get bit by your script. So you will have to use a utility that understands more of the language than you might otherwise expect.

Adam Davis 2009-02-02 16:51:14

Answer 2

+14 A:

I'd use tokenizer. Here's my solution. It should work on both PHP 4 and 5:

$fileStr = file_get_contents('path/to/file');
$newStr  = '';

$commentTokens = array(T_COMMENT);

if (defined('T_DOC_COMMENT'))
    $commentTokens[] = T_DOC_COMMENT; // PHP 5
if (defined('T_ML_COMMENT'))
    $commentTokens[] = T_ML_COMMENT;  // PHP 4

$tokens = token_get_all($fileStr);

foreach ($tokens as $token) {    
    if (is_array($token)) {
        if (in_array($token[0], $commentTokens))
            continue;

        $token = $token[1];
    }

    $newStr .= $token;
}

echo $newStr;

Ionuț G. Stan 2009-02-02 16:53:54

ta for the code! will try it tommorrow.

benlumley 2009-02-02 19:02:31

this sorted it out, ta

benlumley 2009-02-03 13:46:23

Glad I could help.

Ionuț G. Stan 2009-02-03 13:50:21

You should take out `$commentTokens` initialization out of the `foreach` block, otherwise +1 and thanks :)

Raveren 2010-10-10 19:17:07

@Raveren, you're damn right. I have no idea what was in my mind back then to put that piece of code inside the loop. Thanks for pointing it out.

Ionuț G. Stan 2010-10-11 07:39:21

Answer 3

+9 A:

How about using php -w to generate a file stripped of comments and whitespace, then using a beautifier like PHP_Beautifier to reformat for readability?

Paul Dixon 2009-02-02 17:02:22

thats a good option as well .....

benlumley 2009-02-02 17:05:13

+1 - this is probably the best option.

Adam Davis 2009-02-02 17:05:51

thanks for the suggestion - the other way was quicker to use, as all the bits were already on the server.

benlumley 2009-02-03 13:47:02

Yes, I like the tokeniser answer, simpler!

Paul Dixon 2009-02-03 13:48:21

Answer 4

+2 A:

$fileStr = file_get_contents('file.php');
foreach (token_get_all($fileStr) as $token ) {
    if ($token[0] != T_COMMENT) {
        continue;
    }
    $fileStr = str_replace($token[1], '', $fileStr);
}

echo $fileStr;

edit I realised Ionut G. Stan has already suggested this, but I will leave the example here

Tom Haigh 2009-02-02 17:06:17

I think the above snippet should work just fine. It's actually simpler than I thought.

Ionuț G. Stan 2009-02-02 17:14:37

Answer 5

A:

This works: http://devpro.it/remove_phpcomments/

countach 2010-10-24 09:50:25

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Best way to automatically remove comments from PHP code

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