my task is to retrieve a certain pattern from c source code , but the i don't need the comments, so i have to remove them.

----------------the first question-----------------
i have done some processing , the code and the matched pattern are in the same line, i need to match the comments and remove them.
the example goes as follows:

/*******abc*****/ int j = 0; /***abc/cde****/ int i = 3;

all my work is done is in bash script, so your help in bash script is much appreciated.

i have already got this one : awk '{gsub("/\\*[^/]*\\*/","");print}'

but it cannot process the second comment in the example.
so could you give me some help? can I use / and * altogether as one search symbol?



----------------the second question-----------
i need to use commas to separate the code line. but some lines confuses me :
foo ("abc, dec" "we are here", 1, "true");
i need to retrieve the the string "abc, dec we are here", the comma cause me headache.
could you give me some help?



thanks a lot.

Your first problem has 2 issues:

1. awk can use either // to search for a regex or "" to compute a regex. You have used both

2. You are not looking for the unique item to exclude or better way to say it is remove so many lots of not this.
With question 2 i would need to know which version awk you are using? Version 4 (gawk) just released a few days ago will make this simple, but previous versions will require
some finagling.