I'm trying to write something in perl that I need badly in order to save time, as doing it manually is just going to take too long. I need something that can expand out a command that is prefixed by a '@' symbol that describes a multiply-accumulate unit. it would appear as a line in a program that is otherwise to all intents and purposes ANSI C (it's actually a subset). Here's the line that the perl program would need to find and replace:

@MAC(Result,A,B,2); would become:

Result =
(A0*B0)+(A1*B1);

@MAC(output,X,Y,8); would become:

output =
(((X0*Y0)+(X1*Y1))+((X2*Y2)+(X3*Y3)))+
(((X4*Y4)+(X5*Y5))+((X6*Y6)+(X7*Y7)));

The nice neat layout is not that important, what is important is getting the brackets in the right places. The 4th argument would always be a power of two. Essentially I'm trying to let a C-to-VHDL compiler get the hint about the structure of hardware I want.
I would be grateful if anyone had any bright ideas.

In reply to Complicated Search and Replace by gantlord

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