Search and replace by parsing nested clause across multilines using recursive regex

 Let me start with the answer. The answer is:

perl -p -i -e 'undef $/;$re = qr/\((?:[^()]*|(??{$re}))*\)/;s/(create\s+table

\s+.[a-z,A-Z,0-9,.]*\s*$re)\s*(?!SPARSIFY)/$1 SPARSIFY /gis' test/*

Now the question and story behind it: 
Transforming existing code can be bit tricky and less useful sometimes. But at other times it can literally save our jobs! Here is a typical scenario:

FuncName ("Hell brakes $heck if(blah (blah(blah(".
"blah(blah))blah)))", Heaven);

If the above function is called million times at different places and you want to change that crazy looking nested structure inside a function argument what will you do ? Ok, you can slurp the file to a scalar as in here:
http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2009/08/a-one-line-slurp-in-perl-5.html. Then use the recursive regexp idiom:

$re = qr/\((?:[^()]*|(??{$re}))*\)/;
     $input_scalar =~ s/(Hell\s+brakes\s+.[a-z,A-Z,0-9|.]*\s+if\s*$re)\s*(?!HELLIFY)/$1 HELLIFY /gis;

The $re grabs everything in the nested brackets (note you can not to this with regular regex). The rest is search replace as usual with some Look-Around and grouping. Depends on what you want to do. I wanted to append a string after the nested clause ended.

You already know the short answer! The long answer is below.

Have fun! 

sub searchReplaceAcrossLines()
{
    my @files =dir/*; # Read all files in a dir

    my $input_scalar; 

    my @input_array; 

    my $holdTerminator = $/; 

    
    # Multiline search. Can use instead: undef $*=1; 
    undef $/;
#Process each file in the dir
foreach $file (@files) { # Process each file

  # Read the file
  open(FILE,"$file") or die;
  @input_array=
  close(FILE);
  $input_scalar=join("",@input_array);
 
#An example
my $re; # A recursive regular expression for everything in brackets
  # Do your substitution here.
    $re = qr/\((?:[^()]*|(??{$re}))*\)/;
    $input_scalar =~ s/(Hell\s+table\s+.[a-z,A-Z,0-9]*\s*$re)\s*(?!READONLY)/$1 READONLY /gis;

  # Write to file
  open(OUTPUT,">$file") or die;
  print(OUTPUT $input_scalar);
  close(OUTPUT);

  print $file . "\n";
} #End for

$/ = $holdTerminator; #Restore
print "Search replace complete \n";
return 0; } /end subOne can shorten, optimize etc. But this does what is needed at the moment. dprofpp
Total Elapsed Time = 0.019919 Seconds
  User+System Time = 0.019919 Seconds
Exclusive Times
%Time ExclSec CumulS #Calls sec/call Csec/c  Name
 50.2   0.010  0.010      2   0.0050 0.0050  main::BEGIN
 50.2   0.010  0.010      1   0.0100 0.0099  main::searchReplaceAcrossLines
 0.00   0.000  0.000      1   0.0000 0.0000  File::Glob::GLOB_BRACE
 0.00   0.000  0.000      1   0.0000 0.0000  File::Glob::GLOB_NOMAGIC
 0.00   0.000  0.000      1   0.0000 0.0000  File::Glob::GLOB_QUOTE
 0.00   0.000  0.000      1   0.0000 0.0000  File::Glob::GLOB_TILDE
 0.00   0.000  0.000      1   0.0000 0.0000  File::Glob::GLOB_ALPHASORT
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_load_file
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_undef_symbols
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_find_symbol
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  DynaLoader::dl_install_xsub
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  File::Glob::bootstrap
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  File::Glob::doglob
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  warnings::import
 0.00       - -0.000      1        -      -  warnings::BEGIN Here is how profiling works: http://www.perl.com/pub/2004/06/25/profiling.html