One of the lines in my script contains a PHP closing tag inside a string. Under normal operation this does not cause a problem, but I need to comment out the line.

I have tried to comment out this line with // , /* */ and # but none of them work, the parser considers closing tag to be an actual closing tag.

Here is the line in question:

$string = preg_replace('#<br\s*/?>(?:\s*<br\s*/?>)+#i', '<br />', $string); // ^^ ^^

What can I do to comment out the above line?