The stripper compares every name in the AST to a list of prefixes. Note that names here are scoped names, such as "boost::any::any_base::get_obj()" or "Synopsis.Formatter.HTML.core.format()". If a name matches, the prefix is stripped. If a name doesn't match any prefix, it is removed from the AST. If no prefixes are specified then the Stripper does not do anything (it doesn't even walk the tree so there is no performance penalty).

This can be used to select parts of an AST to generate separate documentation. For example, the Synopsis RefManual splits the whole Synopsis AST into sections for formatting into different .info files.