Regularexpression not working.

[dmjpro]

String text = "/** */test/** */test";
System.out.println(text.replaceAll("/\\*\\*.*\\*/"));

It prints test instead of testtest. How regular expression is working here?

[jkmyoung]

It looks like the largest possible substring is being returned in the match, so the substring " */test/** " is matched by .*

[dmjpro]

Then how should I remove /** */? Actually i m trying to remove the documentation part from my JS file when i expose this on web.

[pbrockway2]

There's a good description of regular expressions at http://www.regular-expressions.info/. (The * is being greedy.)

Alteratively, since slash-star comments don't nest you could just use String's indexOf().

[dmjpro]

Yea .. i solved the problem.

while((line = br.readLine()) != null){
            js_text.append(line.trim().replaceAll("//.*", "")); //gets the file text(removed comments //)
        }

int start=0,end=0 ;
        while((start = js_text.indexOf("/*")) != -1){
            end = js_text.indexOf("*/");
            if(end != -1){
                js_text.replace(start, end+2, "");
            }
        }

Thanks a lot ...