Split string with delimiters in C
I think strsep
is still the best tool for this:
while ((token = strsep(&str, ","))) my_fn(token);
That is literally one line that splits a string.
The extra parentheses are a stylistic element to indicate that we're intentionally testing the result of an assignment, not an equality operator ==
.
For that pattern to work, token
and str
both have type char *
. If you started with a string literal, then you'd want to make a copy of it first:
// More general pattern:
const char *my_str_literal = "JAN,FEB,MAR";
char *token, *str, *tofree;
tofree = str = strdup(my_str_literal); // We own str's memory now.
while ((token = strsep(&str, ","))) my_fn(token);
free(tofree);
If two delimiters appear together in str
, you'll get a token
value that's the empty string. The value of str
is modified in that each delimiter encountered is overwritten with a zero byte - another good reason to copy the string being parsed first.
In a comment, someone suggested that strtok
is better than strsep
because strtok
is more portable. Ubuntu and Mac OS X have strsep
; it's safe to guess that other unixy systems do as well. Windows lacks strsep
, but it has strbrk
which enables this short and sweet strsep
replacement:
char *strsep(char **stringp, const char *delim) {
if (*stringp == NULL) { return NULL; }
char *token_start = *stringp;
*stringp = strpbrk(token_start, delim);
if (*stringp) {
**stringp = '\0';
(*stringp)++;
}
return token_start;
}
Here is a good explanation of strsep
vs strtok
. The pros and cons may be judged subjectively; however, I think it's a telling sign that strsep
was designed as a replacement for strtok
.
You can use the strtok()
function to split a string (and specify the delimiter to use). Note that strtok()
will modify the string passed into it. If the original string is required elsewhere make a copy of it and pass the copy to strtok()
.
EDIT:
Example (note it does not handle consecutive delimiters, "JAN,,,FEB,MAR" for example):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <assert.h>
char** str_split(char* a_str, const char a_delim)
{
char** result = 0;
size_t count = 0;
char* tmp = a_str;
char* last_comma = 0;
char delim[2];
delim[0] = a_delim;
delim[1] = 0;
/* Count how many elements will be extracted. */
while (*tmp)
{
if (a_delim == *tmp)
{
count++;
last_comma = tmp;
}
tmp++;
}
/* Add space for trailing token. */
count += last_comma < (a_str + strlen(a_str) - 1);
/* Add space for terminating null string so caller
knows where the list of returned strings ends. */
count++;
result = malloc(sizeof(char*) * count);
if (result)
{
size_t idx = 0;
char* token = strtok(a_str, delim);
while (token)
{
assert(idx < count);
*(result + idx++) = strdup(token);
token = strtok(0, delim);
}
assert(idx == count - 1);
*(result + idx) = 0;
}
return result;
}
int main()
{
char months[] = "JAN,FEB,MAR,APR,MAY,JUN,JUL,AUG,SEP,OCT,NOV,DEC";
char** tokens;
printf("months=[%s]\n\n", months);
tokens = str_split(months, ',');
if (tokens)
{
int i;
for (i = 0; *(tokens + i); i++)
{
printf("month=[%s]\n", *(tokens + i));
free(*(tokens + i));
}
printf("\n");
free(tokens);
}
return 0;
}
Output:
$ ./main.exe
months=[JAN,FEB,MAR,APR,MAY,JUN,JUL,AUG,SEP,OCT,NOV,DEC]
month=[JAN]
month=[FEB]
month=[MAR]
month=[APR]
month=[MAY]
month=[JUN]
month=[JUL]
month=[AUG]
month=[SEP]
month=[OCT]
month=[NOV]
month=[DEC]
String tokenizer this code should put you in the right direction.
int main(void) {
char st[] ="Where there is will, there is a way.";
char *ch;
ch = strtok(st, " ");
while (ch != NULL) {
printf("%s\n", ch);
ch = strtok(NULL, " ,");
}
getch();
return 0;
}