Little gift to the community: remove comments from text string

[AlexanderK79]

I was looking for a PowerQuery function that would return a text string that is stripped from comments, so it could be processed afterwards.

Since I could not find one, I decided to build one myself.

I'd love to hear your feedback and if this helped you... thank you for the kudo 😉 !

(FullText as text) =>
let FT0 = Text.Replace(FullText, Character.FromNumber(13), Character.FromNumber(10)),
    FT1 = Text.Replace(FT0, Character.FromNumber(10)&Character.FromNumber(10), Character.FromNumber(10)),
    FT2 = Text.Replace(FT1, Character.FromNumber(10)&Character.FromNumber(10), Character.FromNumber(10)),
    FT3 = Text.Replace(FT2, Character.FromNumber(10)&Character.FromNumber(10), Character.FromNumber(10)),
    FT9 = FT3,
    CommentStyle1 = // remove the parts encoded with /*  */ 
        List.Transform(
            List.RemoveFirstN(
                Text.Split("/*FAKE START*/"&FT9, "/*")
                , 1
            )
            ,  each Text.Split(_, "*/"){1}
        ),
    TextWithoutCommentStyle1 = Text.Combine(CommentStyle1, Character.FromNumber(10)), // Combine the list back to a text string
    TextWithoutCommentStyle2 = List.Transform(Text.Split(TextWithoutCommentStyle1, Character.FromNumber(10)), each Text.Split(_, "--"){0} ), // now split the line by newline and strip everything after --
    TextWithoutCommentStyle3 = List.Transform(TextWithoutCommentStyle2, each Text.Split(_, "//"){0} ), // now split the line by newline and strip everything after //
    ReturnText = 
    Text.Combine(
        List.Select(
            List.Transform(
                TextWithoutCommentStyle3
                , each Text.Trim(_)
            )
            , each _ <> ""
        )
        , Character.FromNumber(10)
    )

in ReturnText

[V-pazhen-msft]

@AlexanderK79 

Awesome, thank you for sharing. The code was explained nicely, maybe put the sample table too so viewers can follow the tutorial better. 

Paul Zheng _ Community Support Team