title: Stripping Comments out of a file in PHP
body: <p>I have to parse various files that contain comments of differing types.  I have been trying to figure an easy way to strip out these comments, but nothing good so far.  I have full line comments that start with both # and ; and comments that start after relevant data.  Best example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>data
  data
  #comment
  ;comment
  data ;comment
  data #comment
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any help in stripping these comments?  And perhaps blank lines as well?</p>