Mathematica : Convert easily a Notebook format into Wolframscript (.wls) by removing all comments on real instructions lines

Question

I have a Mathematica notebook.

I would like to generate in an automatically way this notebook to a Wolfram script that I could make run directly from terminal under MacOS with : $ wolframscript output_wls.wls

The problem is that, if i export directly from Mathematica to .wls, I have all the lines of the code which are commented.

For example, I get from Mathematica Notebook exporting the following beginning into Wolfram script :

#!/usr/bin/env wolframscript
(* ::Package:: *)

(* ::Input:: *)
(*SetDirectory[NotebookDirectory[]];*)
(*(*Needs["ErrorBarPlots`"];*)
(*Needs["ComputationalGeometry`"];*)
(*Off[CompiledFunction::cflist];*)*)


(* ::Subchapter:: *)
(*Expansion rate date loading*)


(* ::Input:: *)
(*dataH=Import["H_All.txt","Table"];*)
(*dataH = DeleteCases[dataH, x_?(Length[#]==0&), 1];*)
(*ndata=Length[dataH];*)
(*zLine = dataH[[All, 1]];*)


(* ::Subchapter:: *)
(*BD solver with redshift*)


(* ::Input:: *)
(*RK4Method[dH_,d\[Phi]_,d\[Rho]dm_,du_,\[CapitalOmega]dm_,\[CapitalOmega]k_,H0_,\[Phi]0_,d\[Phi]0_,\[Omega]BD_,zLine_]:=Module[*)
(*{h, Htable, \[Rho]dmtable, \[Phi]table, utable, Hk1, Hk2, Hk3,Hk4, \[Rho]dmk1, \[Rho]dmk2, \[Rho]dmk3,\[Rho]dmk4, \[Phi]k1, \[Phi]k2,\[Phi]k3,\[Phi]k4, uk1,uk2, uk3,uk4, containsIndeterminate, containsComplex, Hval},*)
...

If I execute this .wls script, nothing happens : that's normal since there are comments everywhere.

So, I would like to fix this by automatically remove the comments for real original commands and keep the others as notebooks comments.

I know that a magic sed or awk script or command lines could do the trick but I have not enough background to create a such script. However, I think there may be other alternatives.

If someone could find a way to make automatic this task from any notebook to convert to a working executable Wolfram script, this would be fine to tell it.

UPDATE : I tried the solution of Nathan's method but it fails when I evaluate the notebook. Here below the message :

Answer 1

Please check if the following command can help

gawk -f convert.awk example.txt

where example.txt contains your example text and convert.awk the following code.

BEGIN {FS = ""}
{
  for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
    if ((($i == "(") && ($(i+1) == "*")) || (($i == "*") && ($(i+1) == ")"))) {
      i = i + 1
    } else {
      printf("%c", $i)
    }
  }
  printf("\n")
}