How to resolve the algorithm Strip comments from a string step by step in the Mathematica/Wolfram Language programming language

Published on 22 June 2024 08:30 PM

How to resolve the algorithm Strip comments from a string step by step in the Mathematica/Wolfram Language programming language

Table of Contents

Problem Statement

The task is to remove text that follow any of a set of comment markers, (in these examples either a hash or a semicolon) from a string or input line.

Whitespace debacle:   There is some confusion about whether to remove any whitespace from the input line. As of 2 September 2011, at least 8 languages (C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, sed, UNIX Shell) were incorrect, out of 36 total languages, because they did not trim whitespace by 29 March 2011 rules. Some other languages might be incorrect for the same reason. Please discuss this issue at Talk:Strip comments from a string.

The following examples will be truncated to either "apples, pears " or "apples, pears". (This example has flipped between "apples, pears " and "apples, pears" in the past.)

Let's start with the solution:

Step by Step solution about How to resolve the algorithm Strip comments from a string step by step in the Mathematica/Wolfram Language programming language

The Wolfram programming language code you provided performs the following tasks:

  1. Defines a string a that contains two lines of text, with a semicolon (;) and a pound sign (#) in the second line.

  2. Uses the StringReplace function to replace all occurrences of a regular expression pattern in the string a with a new string. The regular expression pattern "[ ]+[#;].+[\n]" matches any sequence of one or more whitespace characters followed by a pound sign (#), a semicolon (;), and one or more characters, followed by a newline character (\n). The replacement string "\n" simply inserts a newline character in place of the matched pattern. This effectively splits the second line of the string a into two lines.

  3. Uses the StringReplace function again to replace all occurrences of a different regular expression pattern in the string b (which is the result of the previous operation) with an empty string. The regular expression pattern "[ ]+[#;].+$" matches any sequence of one or more whitespace characters followed by a pound sign (#), a semicolon (;), and any number of characters until the end of the line ($). The replacement string "" simply deletes the matched pattern from the string. This effectively removes the second line of the string b.

  4. Finally, the result of the last operation is displayed in FullForm, which provides a detailed representation of the expression, including its structure and any attributes.

In summary, the code processes a string to split a line that contains a semicolon and a pound sign into two lines and then removes the second line. The StringReplace function is used with regular expressions to perform these operations.

Source code in the wolfram programming language

a = "apples, pears # and bananas
  apples, pears ; and bananas";
b = StringReplace[a, RegularExpression["[ ]+[#;].+[\n]"] -> "\n"];
StringReplace[b, RegularExpression["[ ]+[#;].+$"] -> ""] // FullForm


  

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