String processing.

String processing. The program CommentStripper.java reads in a Java (or C++) program from standard input, removes all comments, and prints the result to standard output. This would be useful as part of a Java compiler. It removes /* */ and // style comments using a 5 state finite state automaton. It is meant to illustrate the power of DFAs, but to properly strip Java comments, you would need a few more states to handle extra cases, e.g., quoted string literals like s = "/***//*". The picture below is courtesy of David Eppstein.