On *nix: perl -pi -e 's{\b((?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+_)+[a-zA-Z0-9])+\(\)\b}{$1()}g' * On Windows (I think): perl -pi -e "s{\b((?:[a-zA-Z0-9]+_)+[a-zA-Z0-9]+\(\)\b}{$1()}g" *