Question

I have several C files. and I created a function which is named

X_STRING(arg1,arg2,arg3,arg4);

I called this function too many times from different C files. I want to replace the calling of all these functions to X_STRING(arg1, arg2, (arg1) * 2, (arg2) * 3);

awk seems to be the solution but I don’t know how to treat all the cases because I should consider the case where :

1. I call the function with new lines inserted in the code between differnet arguments

e.g.

X_STRING(
arg1, arg2,
arg3, 
arg4);

1. an argument contains a parenthesis :

e.g.

X_STRING(arg1, arg2, (arg3 - 4)*3, arg4);

Someone can point me to good tools to resolve my problem ?

Answer 1

If you don’t mind changing the format in the output, you might be happy with an m4 solution. Put the following in a file:

define( X_STRING, ``X_STRING''( $1, $2, ($1) * 2, ($2) * 3 ))

And then run:

$ m4 def_file file.c

where file.c is your code and def_file is the name of the file with the above content. (The name is irrelevant.)

This should work if your code is well-formatted. (If you have unmatched parentheses, it will fail.)
This will change the whitespace, but otherwise should do what you want.