In which step of compilation are comments removed?

Question

There are several steps in compilation of a program:

• line reconstruction
• lexical analysis
• Preprocessing.
• syntax analysis
• semantic analysis

Is removal of comments in the first step "line reconstruction"?

Answer 1

• Preprocessing is a phase of its own with its own scanning and parsing, which precede lexical analysis.
• I'm a compiler writer and I've never heard of 'line reconstruction'. Compilers don't process lines: they process token streams. Your citation specifically says this is a special case for a few odd languages.
• You've left out flow analysis, optimization, register allocation, and code generation, and a few more.
• Comments are ignored, not removed, during lexical analysis, which is sometimes conceptually described as 'screening' and 'scanning', in which case you can say comments are screened out, like white space.