How to remove comments in SQL with Notepad++

How to remove single line comments

Let say you have the following query:

/*
This is a multi-line comment to help understand the not difficult query
*/

-- Difficult query 1
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=1


-- Difficult query 2
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=2

/*
This is another multi-line comment to help understand the not difficult query
*/

and you want remove all the inline comments:

/*
This is a multi*/

SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=1


SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=2

/*
This is another multi*/
                            

To do this in Notepad++, you can just hit CTRL + H for Replace window and the select the following:

• Find what: [--]+.*\r\n
• Replace with: leave empty
• Flag Regular expression
• Do not flag . matches new lines

How to remove multiline comments

Let say you have the following query:

/*
This is a multi-line comment to help understand the not difficult query
*/

-- Difficult query 1
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=1


-- Difficult query 2
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=2

/*
This is another multi-line comment to help understand the not difficult query
*/
                            

and you want remove all the multiline comments:

-- Difficult query 1
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=1


-- Difficult query 2
SELECT *
FROM MyTable
WHERE Condition=2
                            

To do this in Notepad++, you can just hit CTRL + H for Replace window and the select the following:

• Find what: /\*.*?\*/n
• Replace with: leave empty
• Flag Regular expression
• Do flag . matches new lines