import re

def remove_comments(text):
    def replacer(match):
        s = match.group(0)
        if s.startswith('/'):
            #return " " # note: a space and not an empty string
            return "" # NOTE: an empty string instead of a space
                      # since we dont care about wandom c expressions
                      # like int/**/x=5
        else:
            return s
    pattern = re.compile(
        r'//.*?$|/\*.*?\*/|\'(?:\\.|[^\\\'])*\'|"(?:\\.|[^\\"])*"',
        re.DOTALL | re.MULTILINE
    )
    return re.sub(pattern, replacer, text)