Re: regexp---remove comments---simplification

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2003 at 07:18:48AM -0600, Gary Turner wrote:
> Not an earth-shattering problem.  I try to remove all those comments
> from various config files before emailing them to wherever.  I currently
> chain some greps
> 
> grep -v '^\ *#' some.conf | grep -v '^\ $' > condensed.file
> 
> How would you combine these regexp's to remove a commented line (even if
> indented) and a blank line?  My various permutations and combinations
> have resulted in errors.

You'll want something like this:

  grep -v '^\( *#\| $\)' some.conf > condensed.file

or:

  egrep -v '^( *#| $)' some.conf > condensed.file

The spaces don't need to be escaped in either case; (|) need to be
escaped for basic grep but not for egrep.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]