JS Aggregator comment removal breaks javascript

this seems to be a aggregator bug.

and upgrading to 1.2 solves this for me.

NO, not solved. there is an issue.

in panels/js/display_editor.js there is a comment

/** add content button **/

which contains extra stars.
this will be replaced with a star, which breaks js code.

the offending code is in line 72 of javascript_aggregator.module

          $data = preg_replace('<
            /\*([^*\\\\]|\*(?!/))+\*/    # Remove comments
            >x', '\1', $data);

removing the replacement parameter (which does not make sense to me) solves the issue here.

          $data = preg_replace('<
            /\*([^*\\\\]|\*(?!/))+\*/    # Remove comments
            >x', '', $data);

Memo:
this is the regexp in a more readable form.

          $data = preg_replace('<
            /\*
              (
                [^*\\\\]  // NOT star or backslash
              |
                \*(?!/)  // star but no slash afterwards
              )+
            \*/
            >x', '', $data); # Remove comments

(what does the backslash do there?)

i wonder why not just this

          $data = preg_replace('<
            /\*
              .*?
            \*/
            >x', '', $data); # Remove comments

OK good to know that the things i dont understand contain no secret magic wisdom (but we can of course never be sure ;-)

just sat down a while and thought about it.
then i studiesd some other code. (here is some nice code from the wise python folks.

conclusion:
comment removal always needs a minimal parser, to first rule out string literals!

so we might
a) port the code from the link above
b) backport js aggregator code from drupal 6
c) or live without comment removal until d6

for the moment i choose c)

;-) aexl

i think there should be a new release which strips off that functionality or at least has a strong warning.
what do you think?