How to split a string to 2 strings in C

Question

I was wondering how you could take 1 string, split it into 2 with a delimiter, such as space, and assign the 2 parts to 2 separate strings. I\'ve tried using strtok()

Answer 1

This is how you implement a strtok() like function (taken from a BSD licensed string processing library for C, called zString).

Below function differs from the standard strtok() in the way it recognizes consecutive delimiters, whereas the standard strtok() does not.

char *zstring_strtok(char *str, const char *delim) {
    static char *static_str=0;      /* var to store last address */
    int index=0, strlength=0;       /* integers for indexes */
    int found = 0;                  /* check if delim is found */

    /* delimiter cannot be NULL
    * if no more char left, return NULL as well
    */
    if (delim==0 || (str == 0 && static_str == 0))
        return 0;

    if (str == 0)
        str = static_str;

    /* get length of string */
    while(str[strlength])
        strlength++;

    /* find the first occurance of delim */
    for (index=0;index<strlength;index++)
        if (str[index]==delim[0]) {
            found=1;
            break;
        }

    /* if delim is not contained in str, return str */
    if (!found) {
        static_str = 0;
        return str;
    }

    /* check for consecutive delimiters
    *if first char is delim, return delim
    */
    if (str[0]==delim[0]) {
        static_str = (str + 1);
        return (char *)delim;
    }

    /* terminate the string
    * this assignmetn requires char[], so str has to
    * be char[] rather than *char
    */
    str[index] = '\0';

    /* save the rest of the string */
    if ((str + index + 1)!=0)
        static_str = (str + index + 1);
    else
        static_str = 0;

        return str;
}

Below is an example code that demonstrates the usage

  Example Usage
      char str[] = "A,B,,,C";
      printf("1 %s\n",zstring_strtok(s,","));
      printf("2 %s\n",zstring_strtok(NULL,","));
      printf("3 %s\n",zstring_strtok(NULL,","));
      printf("4 %s\n",zstring_strtok(NULL,","));
      printf("5 %s\n",zstring_strtok(NULL,","));
      printf("6 %s\n",zstring_strtok(NULL,","));

  Example Output
      1 A
      2 B
      3 ,
      4 ,
      5 C
      6 (null)

You can even use a while loop (standard library's strtok() would give the same result here)

char s[]="some text here;
do {
    printf("%s\n",zstring_strtok(s," "));
} while(zstring_strtok(NULL," "));

Answer 2

#include <string.h>

char *token;
char line[] = "SEVERAL WORDS";
char *search = " ";


// Token will point to "SEVERAL".
token = strtok(line, search);


// Token will point to "WORDS".
token = strtok(NULL, search);

---

Update

Note that on some operating systems, strtok man page mentions:

This interface is obsoleted by strsep(3).

An example with strsep is shown below:

char* token;
char* string;
char* tofree;

string = strdup("abc,def,ghi");

if (string != NULL) {

  tofree = string;

  while ((token = strsep(&string, ",")) != NULL)
  {
    printf("%s\n", token);
  }

  free(tofree);
}

Answer 3

For purposes such as this, I tend to use strtok_r() instead of strtok().

For example ...

int main (void) {
char str[128];
char *ptr;

strcpy (str, "123456 789asdf");
strtok_r (str, " ", &ptr);

printf ("'%s'  '%s'\n", str, ptr);
return 0;
}

This will output ...

'123456' '789asdf'

If more delimiters are needed, then loop.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

You can do:

char str[] ="Stackoverflow Serverfault";
char piece1[20] = ""
    ,piece2[20] = "";
char * p;

p = strtok (str," "); // call the strtok with str as 1st arg for the 1st time.
if (p != NULL) // check if we got a token.
{
    strcpy(piece1,p); // save the token.
    p = strtok (NULL, " "); // subsequent call should have NULL as 1st arg.
    if (p != NULL) // check if we got a token.
        strcpy(piece2,p); // save the token.
}
printf("%s :: %s\n",piece1,piece2); // prints Stackoverflow :: Serverfault

If you expect more than one token its better to call the 2nd and subsequent calls to strtok in a while loop until the return value of strtok becomes NULL.

Answer 5

char *line = strdup("user name"); // don't do char *line = "user name"; see Note

char *first_part = strtok(line, " "); //first_part points to "user"
char *sec_part = strtok(NULL, " ");   //sec_part points to "name"

Note: strtok modifies the string, so don't hand it a pointer to string literal.

Answer 6

You can use strtok() for that Example: it works for me

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main ()
{
    char str[] ="- This, a sample string.";
    char * pch;
    printf ("Splitting string \"%s\" into tokens:\n",str);
    pch = strtok (str," ,.-");
    while (pch != NULL)
    {
        printf ("%s\n",pch);
        pch = strtok (NULL, " ,.-");
    }
    return 0;
}