Thread: How to detect and remove the comments in a C source file

I have been looking at a problem of detecting and removing the comment lines. But the program just stops. Here is the code:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
// This code removes the comments from a file while moving the non-comments to another file.
FILE *fs, *ft;
int main ()
{
char source[67], target[67];
int c,d;
puts ("Enter C file name");
gets (source);
fs = fopen(source, "r");
if ( fs==NULL)
  {
   puts ("Can not open source file");
  }
puts ("Enter target name");
gets (target);
ft = fopen (target, "w");
if (ft == NULL)
{
  puts ("Can not open the target file");
}
while ( (c = getc(fs)) != EOF)
  {
    if ( c == '/')
      {
        if ( (d = getc(fs)) == '*')
        incomment();
        else
          {
             fprintf ( ft, "%c", c);
             fprintf ( ft, "%c", d);
          }
      }
    else
    fprintf(ft, "%c", c);
  }
  fclose (fs);
  fclose (ft);

I tried to use GDB, and I want to ask that besides moving the breakpoint further down the code, and press Continue, Print, and Step, is there any other feature of GDB that I can use to quickly find out where the program stops?

I found Remove comments from C/C++ code - Stack Overflow and Jonathan Leffler's post implies that there are different ways of commenting in C. I think it is really clumsy to have to keep adding if blocks for every possible way to comment in C source files. Is there a more elegant way of doing this? Note, this is just an exercise.

When I run GDB I get the following, and I do not know why I get such a large number of c. I also can not figure out why I can not backtrack.

Code:

Enter C file name
test.c
Enter target name
output
Breakpoint 1, incomment () at gd.c:44
44      c = getc(fs);
(gdb) p c
$1 = 1982321136
(gdb) bt
#0  incomment () at gd.c:44
#1  0x004014dc in main () at gd.c:27
(gdb) bt
#0  incomment () at gd.c:44
#1  0x004014dc in main () at gd.c:27
(gdb) bt
#0  incomment () at gd.c:44
#1  0x004014dc in main () at gd.c:27
(gdb)

more detailed debug output

Code:

Enter C file name
test.c
Enter target name
output
Breakpoint 1, main () at gd.c:27
27              incomment();
(gdb) p c
$1 = 47
(gdb) p d
$2 = 42
(gdb) s
incomment () at gd.c:44
44      c = getc(fs);
(gdb) p c
$3 = 1982321136
(gdb)