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[Search] - Find most comments with RegEx

tl;dr: go directly to the RegEx

Especially when dealing with an unfamiliar/legacy codebase, or just cleaning up a larger codebase, you may want to inspect all the comments. Comments tend to get stale and linger much longer than needed. It's a good idea to prune them as you code or do period tidying. That's what the RegEx. I wrote more about my love of RegEx, online prototyping and learning tools, and another use practical use case in the VS Code Search panel.

✅ Detect the following:

  • single-line comments starting with //
    • comments can start at the beginning of the line or they can be added after code
  • multi-line comments where every line starts with // for some reason 🤷‍♂️
// This will be detected

//so will this

alert(""); // this will also be detected

// This
// and this will be detected (as separate comments)

❌ Ignore the following:

  • multi-line comments or JSDoc-style comments using /* */
  • URL strings in the code (if they include :// like https://) inside code or in a multi-line comment.
  • Items marked TODO
  • Error suppressing comments starting with:
    • eslint
    • @
//TODO: this will not be detected

// TODO: neither will this

// @ts-ignore - this will not be detected

//@ts-ignore - this will not be detected

// eslint-disable - this will not be detected

//eslint-disable - this will not be detected

/* 
This will not be detected
*/

/*
This sentence will not be detected. Neither will the URL
https://drecali.link/til
*/

Even though it's not a best practice to suppress errors, that feature exists for a reason and is handy when you're happy with your strict linting rules 99% of the time but need to intentionally break them in a unique situation that warrants it.

🚀 The RegEx

(?<!:)\/\/(?!(\s*eslint))(?!(\s*@))(?!(\s*TODO))

This RegEx finds patterns only if all the criteria below are met:

  • Includes //
  • Does not include a colon (:) before the //
  • Does not include eslint, @, or TODO with or without a space before it.

Many senior devs advised me against reinventing the wheel, so I initially tried to use a RegEx suggested by this StackOverflow answer. That one was really good at detecting edge cases in both both single-line and multi-line comments but it was more difficult to exclude the items I wanted to exclude.