Parse tokens from a string

[Steven Woody]

in C, is there any function can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!

--
steven woody (id: narke)

Celine: Well, who says relationships have to last forever?

- Before Sunrise (1995)

[Simon Biber]

Steven Woody wrote:

in C, is there any function can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!

The original C library comes with a function to do that, it's called
strtok, which stands for "string tokenise" IIRC. The interface leaves
something to be desired though. It's not that hard to do it manually by
manipulating the string as an array of char or through pointers.

char foo[] = "joy to the world";
char *p = strtok(foo, " ");
char *q = strtok(0, " ");
char *r = strtok(0, " ");
char *s = strtok(0, " ");

now
p == foo
q == foo + 4
r == foo + 7
s == foo + 11

and
foo[3] == 0 (previously was ' ')
foo[6] == 0 (previously was ' ')
foo[10] == 0 (previously was ' ')
foo[16] == 0 (unchanged)

Make sure you understand that it modifies the original array, and
returns pointers into that array! The strings you get back should be
copied into some more permanent storage if you plan to re-use the
original array to read in another line of input.

Also understand that it treats several consecutive separators as one, so
the string "a,b,,d" will be parsed as {"a", "b", "d"} instead of {"a",
"b", "", "d"}.

--
Simon.

[Eric Sosman]

Steven Woody wrote:

in C, is there any function can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!

There's strtok(). It has some drawbacks and may not do
exactly the kind of "decomposition" you want -- but since
you didn't describe what you want, all I can do is suggest
that you take a look.

Another possibility is sscanf(). It, too, has drawbacks
and may not do exactly what you had in mind, but take a
look anyhow.

Finally, there's roll-your-own string-bashing with
strchr(), strrchr(), strstr(), strspn(), strcspn(), ...

--
Er*********@sun.com

[tedu]

Eric Sosman wrote:

Steven Woody wrote:

in C, is there any function can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!

There's strtok(). It has some drawbacks and may not do
exactly the kind of "decomposition" you want -- but since
you didn't describe what you want, all I can do is suggest
that you take a look.

thought not standard, strsep() may also be available in some
environments. if it's not, the source is easy to come by and
incorporate.

[Ben Pfaff]

Eric Sosman <er*********@sun.com> writes:

Steven Woody wrote:

in C, is there any function can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!

There's strtok(). It has some drawbacks and may not do
exactly the kind of "decomposition" you want -- but since
you didn't describe what you want, all I can do is suggest
that you take a look.

For what it's worth, here is my standard list of drawbacks to
strtok():

* It merges adjacent delimiters. If you use a comma as
your delimiter, then "a,,b,c" is three tokens, not
four. This is often the wrong thing to do. In fact,
it is only the right thing to do, in my experience,
when the delimiter set is limited to white space.

* The identity of the delimiter is lost, because it is
changed to a null terminator.

* It modifies the string that it tokenizes. This is bad
because it forces you to make a copy of the string if
you want to use it later. It also means that you can't
tokenize a string literal with it; this is not
necessarily something you'd want to do all the time but
it is surprising.

* It can only be used once at a time. If a sequence of
strtok() calls is ongoing and another one is started,
the state of the first one is lost. This isn't a
problem for small programs but it is easy to lose track
of such things in hierarchies of nested functions in
large programs. In other words, strtok() breaks
encapsulation.

--
"I hope, some day, to learn to read.
It seems to be even harder than writing."
--Richard Heathfield

[pete]

tedu wrote:

Eric Sosman wrote:

Steven Woody wrote:

in C, is there any function
can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!

There's strtok(). It has some drawbacks and may not do
exactly the kind of "decomposition" you want -- but since
you didn't describe what you want, all I can do is suggest
that you take a look.

thought not standard, strsep() may also be available in some
environments. if it's not, the source is easy to come by and
incorporate.

Here's what I have for strsep:

#include <string.h>

char *str_sep(char **s1, const char *s2)
{
char *const p1 = *s1;

if (p1 != NULL) {
*s1 = strpbrk(p1, s2);
if (*s1 != NULL) {
*(*s1)++ = '\0';
}
}
return p1;
}
/*
** K&R2 Exercise 2-4
** alternate squeeze function using str_sep.
*/

char *str_squeeze_s(char *s1, const char *s2)
{
char *const p1 = s1;
const char *const p2 = s2;
char * p3 = p1;

do {
s2 = str_sep(&p3, p2);
while (*s2 != '\0') {
*s1++ = *s2++;
}
} while (p3 != NULL);
*s1 = '\0';
return p1;
}

--
pete

[Steven Woody]

Eric Sosman <er*********@sun.com> writes:

Steven Woody wrote:

in C, is there any function can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!
There's strtok(). It has some drawbacks and may not do
exactly the kind of "decomposition" you want -- but since
you didn't describe what you want, all I can do is suggest
that you take a look.

strtok's man page say, it can not handle empty field. what exactly does this
mean ?

actually, what i want to do is:

1, read a line in a text configuration file.
2, the line are just string tokens seperated white spaces.
3, goto 1 until eof.

Another possibility is sscanf(). It, too, has drawbacks
and may not do exactly what you had in mind, but take a
look anyhow.

Finally, there's roll-your-own string-bashing with
strchr(), strrchr(), strstr(), strspn(), strcspn(), ...

--
Er*********@sun.com

--
steven woody (id: narke)

Celine: Well, who says relationships have to last forever?

- Before Sunrise (1995)

[Steven Woody]

pete <pf*****@mindspring.com> writes:

tedu wrote:

Eric Sosman wrote:

> Steven Woody wrote:
> > in C, is there any function
> > can be used to decompose tokens from a string? if
> > not, can i find it in CPP? thanks!
>
> There's strtok(). It has some drawbacks and may not do
> exactly the kind of "decomposition" you want -- but since
> you didn't describe what you want, all I can do is suggest
> that you take a look.

thought not standard, strsep() may also be available in some
environments. if it's not, the source is easy to come by and
incorporate.

Here's what I have for strsep:

#include <string.h>

char *str_sep(char **s1, const char *s2)
{
char *const p1 = *s1;

if (p1 != NULL) {
*s1 = strpbrk(p1, s2);
if (*s1 != NULL) {
*(*s1)++ = '\0';
}
}
return p1;
}
/*
** K&R2 Exercise 2-4
** alternate squeeze function using str_sep.
*/

char *str_squeeze_s(char *s1, const char *s2)
{
char *const p1 = s1;
const char *const p2 = s2;
char * p3 = p1;

do {
s2 = str_sep(&p3, p2);
while (*s2 != '\0') {
*s1++ = *s2++;
}
} while (p3 != NULL);
*s1 = '\0';
return p1;
}

--
pete

thanks for sharing the code, it's worthy to read.

--
steven woody (id: narke)

Virginia Woolf: Someone has to die Leonard, in order that the rest of
us should value our life more.

- The Hours (2002)