JohnAllen.us

When I’m writing iRules programs on my MacBook Pro as part of my job at F5 Networks, I like to copy in configuration and setup information as part of documenting the program.  This entails cutting and pasting in multi-line config file sections and then adding the ‘#’ comment character to the start of each line.  Well, after doing that a couple of times, I knew there was a way to automate that.  Enter some Applescript:

(*  Comment/Uncomment Block
    Add & remove '# ' in Selection. Good for iRules comments.
	Assign to a key for best use.

	John Allen, F5 Networks
	Sept. 12, 2011
*)

tell application "BBEdit"
	activate
	repeat with x in lines of selection of window 1 of text document 1
		if exists character 1 of text of x then
			set start to character 1 of text of x as text
		else
			set start to ""
		end if
		if start is not "#" then
			replace "^" using "# " searching in text of x options {search mode:grep}
		else
			replace "^# " using "" searching in text of x options {search mode:grep}
		end if
	end repeat
end tell

Of course, you can modify this to work with any programming language.