In Eclipse use find/replace to comment multiline statements

Question

While debugging code, I added a bunch of lines in the form of

System.out.println("DEBUG: (Some statement)");
System.out.println("DEBUG: (Some statement)" + (Some expression));
System.out.println("DEBUG: (Some statement)" + (Some expression) + "Some other text");
System.out.println("DEBUG: (Some statement)" 
    + (Some expression)
    + "(Some other statement)");
System.out
    .println("DEBUG: (Some statement)" 
        + (Some expression)
        + "(Some other statement)");

where (Some expression) and (some statement) are expressions and statements respectively.

Now that I'm done debugging the code, I would like to be able to comment it out using find and replace, and to uncomment it later, if more bugs appear.

I have a regex that works for the single-line statements. (System.out.println("DEBUG:[^,]+"\n)

Is there a regex that works for the multiline statements?

Can't you simply select all those lines and press `Ctrl + Shift + /`? — KrishPrabakar, Mar 11 '15 at 04:25
It surrounds your statements with a [multi line comment](http://javadude.com/articles/comments.html) (/* */) — KrishPrabakar, Mar 12 '15 at 05:28
@Krish Ah. The problem is that there are many lines that need to be commented and uncommented later. Thanks for the tip though. — 0az, Mar 12 '15 at 23:06
To uncomment those lines, you can use `Ctrl + Shift + \ (backslash)` — KrishPrabakar, Mar 13 '15 at 04:43

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:43

1

I suggest go for this solution. Check this post.

Any way regular expression as you asked:

Commenting

Find string: (?m)(?s)(System[\W.]*?out[\W.]*print[\w]*\(\"DEBUG:(.*?);)

Replace string: /*\1*/

Un commenting

Find string:

(?m)(?s)/\*((?m)(?s)(System[\W.]*?out[\W.]*print[\w]*\(\"DEBUG:(.*?);))\*/

Replace string: \1

Refer meta character

edited May 23 '17 at 11:43

Community

1
1

answered Mar 11 '15 at 08:57

Chandrayya G K

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Thanks! I'll try it when I get back to my laptop. – 0az Mar 12 '15 at 05:12
One issue with the regex is that I've been using single line comments, though that's a minor issue and easy to fix. Another issue is that the first regex also matches System.in, System.err.println and anything that starts with System., which is an issue because I have a good amount of those. I'd upvote, but I don't have the rep :(. – 0az Mar 12 '15 at 23:10
@alphadelta Now I changed the regular expression. Test it if it works then accept and upvote my answer – Chandrayya G K Mar 20 '15 at 12:59
Works perfectly. Sorry for the late response; I've been busy for the past couple days. – 0az Mar 25 '15 at 01:16

In Eclipse use find/replace to comment multiline statements

1 Answers1