Create a program that takes a file as input and returns several statements about the program's comments: how many, what types, how many TODOs, etc. I created my solution in Java. The main code can be found in Solution.java. The test suite can be found in SolutionTest.java.

After creating a JAR file, this program can be run in any folder by typing

java -jar path/to/jar.jar

It will then wait for input. Please enter a relative or absolute path to the file you want to analyse.

Statistics such as the following will then be printed to the console:

Total # of lines: 52
Total # of comment lines: 5
Total # of single line comments: 2
Total # of comment lines within block comments: 3
Total # of block line comments: 1
Total # of TODO’s: 0

1. Lines that contain multiple TODO would be considered as one TODO. E.g.

// TODO: Write up all the TODOs we have to complete this week

2. Multiline comments that appear next to code count as single line comments. For example

code() // comment about code
moreCode() // comment about more code

or

hello() # comment
# other comment

Will each count as 2 comments, not one block comment

This program does not handle comments in languages such as Scheme, that use ;; for their comment schemes.

This program counts lines such as

System.out.println("// A comment");

as comments at the given time.

After submitting this challenge, I learned by chance that Python also recently started to support ''' ''' as syntax for multiline comments. This is not implemented in my solution at this time.