Removing comment lines & empty lines with Awk

Remove comment lines and empty lines with Awk.md

awk '!/^([[:space:]]*#.*)?$/' testfile

testfile :

Beginning line
  Line starts with spaces
# Comment line
  # Comment line starts with spaces
Line # with a comment
2 empty lines below


Ending line

Result:

Beginning line
  Line starts with spaces
Line # with a comment
2 empty lines below
Ending line

+ Trimming leading & trailing whitespaces

awk '!/^([[:space:]]*#.*)?$/ {$1=$1;print}' testfile

Result:

Beginning line
Line starts with spaces
Line # with a comment
2 empty lines below
Ending line