remove-comments

Every comment, gone. Nothing else touched.

A fast, zero dependency command line tool that removes comments from source code in 132 languages. Written in Rust. Safe by default.

Why

Comments are for people. Sometimes you need code without them: before publishing, before measuring, before feeding code to another tool. Removing them by hand is slow. Removing them with regular expressions breaks strings, URLs, and templates.

remove-comments understands each language. It knows that # port in a YAML value is data, that :// is a URL, that a Ruby heredoc is a string, and that eslint-disable keeps your build green.

Install

With Rust installed:

cargo install --path .

Or download a prebuilt binary from the releases page.

Usage

Preview first. Nothing is ever written without --write.

remove-comments src/

remove-comments preview

  found   src/app.js     12 comments   306 B
  found   src/main.rs     8 comments   174 B

  2 of 41 files have comments, 20 comments, 480 B
  nothing changed, run with --write to apply

Apply:

remove-comments --write src/

See exactly what changes:

remove-comments --diff src/

Guard a pipeline:

remove-comments --check src/ && echo "no comments"

Use it in a pipe:

cat build.log.py | remove-comments --stdin --lang python

What it keeps

Some comments are load bearing. These stay unless you say otherwise.

Kept by default	Example	Remove with
Shebang lines	#!/usr/bin/env bash	never removed
License headers	/* Copyright ... */	--strip-license
Tool directives	eslint-disable, noqa, go:build, shellcheck	--strip-directives
Compiler pragmas	{-# LANGUAGE #-}, {$MODE}	--strip-directives

Documentation comments such as /// and /** */ are removed by default. Keep them with --keep-doc. Keep anything else with --keep <text>.

Safety

• Preview is the default mode. Writing requires --write.
• node_modules, target, dist, vendor and 60 other build and dependency directories are never entered. Open one deliberately with --allow <name>.
• .git is never touched, even with --allow.
• Binary, minified, generated, and lockfile content is detected and skipped.
• Hidden files and symlinks are skipped unless you opt in.
• Writes are atomic and preserve file permissions. --backup keeps a .orig copy.
• When the parser is not sure, it keeps the comment. Corruption is the only failure that matters, so every uncertain case fails toward keeping your code intact.

Options

remove-comments [options] [path ...]

Option	Meaning
-w, --write	Apply changes
--check	Exit 1 if comments are found
--diff	Show removed and rewritten lines
--json	Machine readable report
-b, --backup	Keep a .orig copy of changed files
--keep <text>	Keep comments containing text
--keep-doc	Keep documentation comments
--allow / --deny <name>	Manage protected directories
-l, --lang <name>	Force a language
--list-languages	Show all 132 languages

Run remove-comments --help for the full list.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
1	Comments found, only with --check
2	Usage error
3	Some files could not be processed

Languages

All 132, from C to Zig, including template engines, shells, build files, and hardware description languages. The full table lives in docs/LANGUAGES.md.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. The short version: the codebase contains zero comments on purpose, names carry the meaning, and every language rule ships with tests.

License

MIT