clear-comments

Clear Comments

A fast and focused CLI tool to remove comments from your React/JavaScript projects.

🎯 Why Clear Comments?

Perfect For:

• Client Deliveries: Ship clean, professional code without internal comments
• Production Builds: Remove comments before deployment when bundlers aren't suitable
• Educational Materials: Create clean code examples for tutorials or documentation
• Open Source Releases: Prepare polished versions without development comments
• Legacy Projects: Clean up codebases where modern build tools aren't integrated
• Quick Cleanup: Simple comment removal without complex build pipeline setup

Real Value:

• ⚡ Fast Processing: Handles large codebases in seconds
• 🎯 Surgical Precision: Removes only comments, preserves JSDoc by default
• 🔧 Zero Configuration: Works out of the box with sensible defaults
• 📦 Lightweight: Single-purpose tool without bloat
• 🚀 Build Integration: Easy to integrate into existing workflows

⚠️ Important Considerations

You might NOT need this tool if:

• ✅ Your bundler (Webpack, Vite, Rollup) already handles comment removal
• ✅ You're using minification tools (Terser, UglifyJS) in your build process
• ✅ Comments are valuable for code maintenance in your workflow
• ✅ You have a comprehensive build pipeline that handles this

This tool is designed for specific use cases where existing solutions don't fit your needs.

Installation

Global Installation (Recommended)

npm install -g clear-comments

Local Installation

npm install clear-comments --save-dev

Usage

Command Line

Clear comments in current directory:

clear-comments

Clear comments in specific directory:

clear-comments ./src

With verbose output:

clear-comments --verbose
clear-comments ./src -v

Remove JSDoc comments too:

clear-comments --no-jsdoc

Remove all extra empty lines:

clear-comments ./src --no-jsdoc --remove-empty-lines true

Show help:

clear-comments --help

Using with npx (no installation required):

npx clear-comments
npx clear-comments ./src --verbose

Build Integration Examples

In package.json scripts:

{
  "scripts": {
    "clean-code": "clear-comments ./src",
    "prebuild": "clear-comments ./src --no-jsdoc",
    "prepare-delivery": "clear-comments ./dist --verbose"
  }
}

In CI/CD pipeline:

- name: Clean comments for production
  run: npx clear-comments ./src --no-jsdoc

Programmatic Usage (TypeScript/JavaScript)

import { clearComments, removeComments } from 'clear-comments';

// Clear comments in entire project with options
const stats = await clearComments({
  targetDir: './src',
  verbose: true,
  preserveJSDoc: true,
  removeEmptyLines:false,
  excludePatterns: ['**/generated/**']
});

console.log(`Processed ${stats.processedFiles} files`);
console.log(`Removed ${stats.totalLinesRemoved} lines of comments`);

// Remove comments from a string
const cleanCode = removeComments(sourceCode, '.tsx', true {
  removeEmptyLines: true
});

// CommonJS usage
const { clearComments, removeComments } = require("clear-comments");

// Same API as above

Features

• ✅ Removes single-line comments (// comment)
• ✅ Removes multi-line comments (/* comment */)
• ✅ Removes JSX comments ({/* comment */})
• ✅ Removes HTML comments (<!-- comment -->)
• ✅ Preserves empty lines by default ✅ (new)
• ✅ Preserves JSDoc comments (/** comment */) by default
• ✅ Supports JavaScript (.js)
• ✅ Supports TypeScript (.ts)
• ✅ Supports JSX (.jsx)
• ✅ Supports TSX (.tsx)
• ✅ Automatically excludes node_modules, dist, build directories
• ✅ Fast processing with glob patterns
• ✅ Detailed statistics and error reporting
• ✅ Configurable exclusion patterns

Supported File Types

• .js - JavaScript files
• .jsx - React JSX files
• .ts - TypeScript files
• .tsx - TypeScript JSX files

Use Cases & Examples

Client Delivery Scenario

# Before delivering to client, clean up internal comments
clear-comments ./project-src --verbose
# ✅ Cleaned: 47 files, removed 312 lines of comments

Educational Content Preparation

# Prepare clean examples for tutorial
clear-comments ./tutorial-code --no-jsdoc
# Creates clean, distraction-free code examples

Legacy Project Cleanup

# Clean up old codebase before modernization
clear-comments ./legacy-app --verbose
# Removes outdated comments while preserving JSDoc

Code Transformation Example

Before:

// This is a component for user authentication [comment way we go comot]
function MyComponent() {
  /* State management for login form [comment way we go comot] */
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0); // Counter state [comment way we go comot]

  /**
   * Handles user login
   * @param credentials User login data
   */
  const handleLogin = (credentials) => {
    // TODO: Add validation [comment way go comot]
    return authenticate(credentials);
  };

  return (
    <div>
      {/* JSX comment - login form [comment way go comot]*/}
      <h1>Count: {count}</h1>
      <!-- HTML comment (shouldn't be here) -->
    </div>
  );
}

After (with JSDoc preservation):

function MyComponent() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  /**
   * Handles user login [comment way no we no comot]
   * @param credentials User login data
   */
  const handleLogin = (credentials) => {
    return authenticate(credentials);
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>Count: {count}</h1>
    </div>
  );
}

Development

Setup

git clone https://github.com/asapcone/clear-comments.git
cd clear-comments
npm install

Build

npm run build

Development Mode (watch for changes)

npm run dev

Run Tests

npm test

Clean Build Artifacts

npm run clean

CLI Options

Option	Description	Default
directory	Target directory to process	Current directory
--verbose, -v	Show detailed processing output	false
--no-jsdoc	Remove JSDoc comments as well	Preserves JSDoc
--help, -h	Show help information	-
--remove-empty-lines [true false]	Preserve or remove blank lines	False

Programmatic API

clearComments(options)

Main function to process files in a directory.

Options:

• targetDir?: string - Directory to process
• preserveJSDoc?: boolean - Keep JSDoc comments (default: true)
• verbose?: boolean - Detailed logging (default: false)
• excludePatterns?: string[] - Additional exclusion patterns

Returns: Promise<ProcessingStats>

removeComments(content, extension, preserveJSDoc)

Remove comments from a string of code.

Parameters:

• content: string - Source code content
• extension: '.js' | '.jsx' | '.ts' | '.tsx' - File extension
• preserveJSDoc: boolean - Whether to preserve JSDoc

Returns: string - Cleaned content

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please:

• Fork the repository
• Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
• Add tests for new functionality
• Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
• Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
• Open a Pull Request

Roadmap

• Configuration file support (.clearrc)
• Backup functionality before processing
• Custom comment pattern support
• Integration with popular bundlers
• Performance improvements for very large codebases

License

MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Author

Aaron Sunday

• GitHub: @asapconet

Changelog

0.1.2 (Latest)

• 🆕 Remove Empty Lines by Default

• ➕ Added --preserve-empty-lines CLI option

• 🛠 Improved merging of CLI options and config

0.1.1

• 🔧 Update executable file

0.1.0

• Initial release
• Support for JS, JSX, TS, TSX files
• CLI interface with verbose mode
• Programmatic API
• JSDoc preservation option
• Comprehensive test suite
• TypeScript implementation with modular architecture

💡 Need help? Open an issue on GitHub or check out the examples above.

🤝 Found this useful? Star the repo and share with your team!