How to search and replace a particular code line in C source using Perl/anything else?

I have a C source code spread over many source files (*.c). For porting reasons say I need to comment out below statements from all source files

fprintf(stderr,"......",....);

The problem is these fprintf开发者_StackOverflows could be multiline statements, meaning broken into two/or more lines spread over two lines in source files with a newline character(carriage returned entered at end of one line).

How can I find such fprintfs scattered across all source files, replace them with a multiline C comment as:

/*
*/

Since they are multiline, the find and replace command of source editors did not help.

I am trying to read the source file using a PERL script but, parse them to do this but could not.

Any pointers would be useful.

thank you. -AD.

What you are looking for is named "coccinelle", it's semantic patch tool for C, via this you can easily do this. viz. http://coccinelle.lip6.fr/

Just

#undef fprintf
#define fprintf(stream, format, ...) 42

at the top of your files and be happy.

For a pure perl solution try something like this:

my $all_lines;
{              # (limit scope of $/, if appropriate)
  local $/;    #slurp entire file in one go
  $all_lines = <$file_handle>
  $all_lines =~ s|(\bfprintf\s*\(\s*stderr\s*,.*?\)\s*;)|/* $1 */|sg;
}