diff --git a/tools/replacer.py b/tools/replacer.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000000..4ba319f7b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tools/replacer.py
@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+#! /usr/bin/env python
+
+import re
+import sys
+
+repl={
+    'allocate_blacs_matrix':'cp_fm_create2',
+    'allocate_blacs_matrix_vect':'cp_fm_vect_create2',
+    'blacs_add':'cp_fm_add',
+    'blacs_gemm':'cp_fm_gemm',
+    'blacs_matrix_p_type':'cp_full_matrix_p_type',
+    'blacs_matrix_type':'cp_full_matrix_type',
+    'blacs_symm':'cp_fm_symm',
+    'blacs_syrk':'cp_fm_syrk',
+    'deallocate_blacs_matrix':'cp_fm_release',
+    'deallocate_blacs_matrix_vect':'cp_fm_vect_dealloc',
+    'get_blacs_matrix_info':'cp_fm_get_info',
+    'sparse_plus_blacs_blacst':'cp_sm_plus_fm_fm_t',
+    'sparse_times_blacs':'cp_sm_fm_multiply',
+    }
+
+specialRepl={re.compile(r"%blacs_matrix(\W)",flags=re.IGNORECASE):r"%matrix\1"}
+
+def replaceWords(infile,outfile,replacements,specialReplacements=None,
+                 logFile=sys.stdout):
+    """Replaces the words in infile writing the output to outfile.
+    
+    replacements is a dictionary with the words to replace.
+    specialReplacements is a dictionary with general regexp replacements.
+    """
+    lineNr=0
+    nonWordRe=re.compile(r"(\W+)")
+    while 1:
+        line= infile.readline()
+        lineNr=lineNr+1
+        if not line: break
+        
+        if specialReplacements:
+            for subs in specialReplacements.keys():
+                line=subs.sub(specialReplacements[subs],line)
+                
+        tokens=nonWordRe.split(line)
+        for token in tokens:
+            if replacements.has_key(token):
+                outfile.write(replacements[token])
+            else:
+                outfile.write(token)
+        
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    if len(sys.argv)<2:
+        print "usage:", sys.argv[0]," file_in file_out"
+    else:
+        infile=open(sys.argv[1],'r')
+        outfile=open(sys.argv[2],'w')
+        replaceWords(infile,outfile,replacements=repl,
+                     specialReplacements=specialRepl)
+