Comment Destroyer

A dependency-free utility to strip comments from source code files, available in both a user-friendly GUI and a command-line tool.

Built on: Comment-Parser

Have you ever needed to prepare a source code file for distribution, analysis, or simply to get a clean line count without comments? Comment Destroyer provides a simple, reliable solution to remove all comment types from a wide range of programming languages, ensuring that what's inside strings or other syntax isn't accidentally broken.

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1. Graphical User Interface (GUI)

For users who prefer a visual interface, the commentdestroyer.py application offers a simple and safe workflow.

• Easy File Selection: Use the native Windows/macOS/Linux file browser to select one or multiple files at once.
• Multi-Language Support: Mix and match different file types (e.g., .py, .cpp, .js) in a single batch. The tool automatically detects the language and applies the correct stripping rules.
• Safe Saving Options:
  • Strip & Save As...: The default, safe option that creates a new file with .stripped appended to the name, leaving your original file untouched.
  • Strip & Overwrite: A powerful option to permanently modify the original file in place.
• Interactive Confirmation: Before any files are modified, a confirmation dialog appears, giving you a final chance to review your choices.
• Stripping Control: A checkbox in the confirmation dialog allows you to choose whether to Preserve blank lines, which is useful for maintaining line numbers for debugging or analysis.

2. Command-Line Interface (CLI)

• Clear Arguments: Use simple flags to control the output.
  • files: A list of one or more files to process.
  • -o or --overwrite: Overwrites the original files. Includes a safety confirmation prompt.
  • -p or --preserve-lines: Keeps blank lines where comments were, preserving line numbers.
• Built-in Help: Run with --help to see all options and examples.

# Example: Create new stripped files
python commentdestroyer_cli.py my_code.cpp my_script.py

# Example: Overwrite original files and preserve line numbers
python commentdestroyer_cli.py main.java --overwrite --preserve-lines

Technical Details

This tool was designed for robustness and portability, avoiding the pitfalls of simpler regex-based solutions.

Core Stripping Engine

The core logic is a dependency-free state machine that parses code character by character. It explicitly tracks its state to differentiate between being inside a multi-line comment, a single-line comment, a string literal ("..."), or a character literal ('...'). This approach correctly handles complex edge cases, such as comment-like syntax appearing within a string, which often cause naive regex strippers to fail.

Language Support and Extensibility

This tool supports a wide variety of programming languages by categorizing their comment syntax. The internal engine is highly extensible—to add a new language, you simply need to add its file extension to the appropriate category within the LANGUAGE_STYLE_MAP dictionary in the source code.

The table below details the currently supported languages and their comment styles.

Language	File Extensions	Comment Style
C / C++	.c, .h, .cpp, .hpp, .cc	// (single-line) and /* ... */ (block)
Java	.java	// (single-line) and /* ... */ (block)
JavaScript	.js, .mjs, .jsx	// (single-line) and /* ... */ (block)
TypeScript	.ts, .tsx	// (single-line) and /* ... */ (block)
Go	.go	// (single-line) and /* ... */ (block)
Rust	.rs	// (single-line) and /* ... */ (block)
CSS	.css	/* ... */ (block only)
Python	.py, .pyw	# (single-line)
Ruby	.rb	# (single-line)
Shell Script	.sh	# (single-line)
HTML	.html, .htm	(block)
XML	.xml	(block)