emulating comments in vim's dict literals

gistfile1.vim

" Barry Arthur, July 2015
" Kludge emulating comments in dict literals
" :-0 surprised?!

function! StripComments(comment_leader, dict)
  return filter(a:dict, 'v:key !~ "^" . escape(a:comment_leader, "\"")')
endfunction

let x = StripComments('REM', {
      \  'a'  : 1
      \, 'REM This is a nasty workaround mimicking comments in dict literals'                                :-0
      \, 'b'  : 2
      \, 'REM Duplicate keys are not tolerated within dict literals, hence the numbered comment keys'        :-0
      \, 'c'  : 3
      \, 'REM For the younger audience members, REM stands for "remark" and was the comment leader in BASIC' :-0
      \, 'd'  : 4
      \})