Is there a way to count tokens in C?

Question

I\'m using strtok to split a string into tokens. Does anyone know any function which actually counts the number of tokens?

I have a command string and I nee

Answer 1

Here is a version based on strtok which does not modify the original string, but a temporal copy of it. This version works for any combination of tabs and space characters used as tokens separators. The function is

unsigned long int getNofTokens(const char* string){
  char* stringCopy;
  unsigned long int stringLength;
  unsigned long int count = 0;

  stringLength = (unsigned)strlen(string);
  stringCopy = malloc((stringLength+1)*sizeof(char));
  strcpy(stringCopy,string);

  if( strtok(stringCopy, " \t") != NULL){
    count++;
    while( strtok(NULL," \t") != NULL )
        count++;
  }

  free(stringCopy);
  return count;
}

A function call could be

char stringExample[]=" wordA 25.4 \t 5.6e-3\t\twordB 4.5e005\t ";
printf("number of elements in stringExample is %lu",getNofTokens(stringExample));

Output is

number of elements in stringExample is 5