Question

I have a large codebase, where we need to make a pattern-change in the argument of a specific function.

i.e. All arguments to a function foo() are renamed from the format something.anotherThing are to be renamed as something_anotherThing

The arguments can be anything but will always be in a str1.str2 format. It is to be done for arguments of this one function only, all other code should remain untouched.

e.g.
foo(a.x) –> foo(a_x)
foo(a4.b6) –> foo(a4_b6)

Is there any way I can achieve it using regular expression or a tool, where i can do this in one step for all the files, for one specific function?

Answer 1

If the function would have only one argument, it would be easy:

Use a tool that is able to search and replace in multiple files, eg. TextCrawler.

And than select the regular expression tab and fill in:

RegExp:

(foo\([^)]+)(\.)([^)]+\))

Replace:

$1_$3

This will not work, if there are more arguments in the function. But you can click the “Replace” button again and then again until it says that no result was found. You will have to do it maximum n-times, where n = max number of arguments in any function.