How to extract numbers from string in c?

Question

Say I have a string like ab234cid*(s349*(20kd and I want to extract all the numbers 234, 349, 20, what should I do ?

Answer 1

If the numbers are seprated by whitespace in the string then you can use sscanf(). Since, it's not the case with your example, you have to do it yourself:

char tmp[256];

for(i=0;str[i];i++)
{
  j=0;
  while(str[i]>='0' && str[i]<='9')
  {
     tmp[j]=str[i];
     i++;
     j++;
  }
  tmp[j]=0;
  printf("%ld", strtol(tmp, &tmp, 10));
  // Or store in an integer array

}

Answer 2

A possible solution using sscanf() and scan sets:

const char* s = "ab234cid*(s349*(20kd";
int i1, i2, i3;
if (3 == sscanf(s,
                "%*[^0123456789]%d%*[^0123456789]%d%*[^0123456789]%d",
                &i1,
                &i2,
                &i3))
{
    printf("%d %d %d\n", i1, i2, i3);
}

where %*[^0123456789] means ignore input until a digit is found. See demo at http://ideone.com/2hB4UW .

Or, if the number of numbers is unknown you can use %n specifier to record the last position read in the buffer:

const char* s = "ab234cid*(s349*(20kd";
int total_n = 0;
int n;
int i;
while (1 == sscanf(s + total_n, "%*[^0123456789]%d%n", &i, &n))
{
    total_n += n;
    printf("%d\n", i);
}

Answer 3

Make a state machine that operates on one basic principle: is the current character a number.

• When transitioning from non-digit to digit, you initialize your current_number := number.
• when transitioning from digit to digit, you "shift" the new digit in:
  current_number := current_number * 10 + number;
• when transitioning from digit to non-digit, you output the current_number
• when from non-digit to non-digit, you do nothing.

Optimizations are possible.

Answer 4

You can do it with strtol, like this:

char *str = "ab234cid*(s349*(20kd", *p = str;
while (*p) { // While there are more characters to process...
    if ( isdigit(*p) || ( (*p=='-'||*p=='+') && isdigit(*(p+1)) )) {
        // Found a number
        long val = strtol(p, &p, 10); // Read number
        printf("%ld\n", val); // and print it.
    } else {
        // Otherwise, move on to the next character.
        p++;
    }
}

Link to ideone.

Answer 5

here after a simple solution using sscanf:

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

char str[256]="ab234cid*(s349*(20kd";
char tmp[256];

int main()
{

    int x;
    tmp[0]='\0';
    while (sscanf(str,"%[^0123456789]%s",tmp,str)>1||sscanf(str,"%d%s",&x,str))
    {
        if (tmp[0]=='\0')
        {
            printf("%d\r\n",x);
        }
        tmp[0]='\0';

    }
}

Answer 6

#include<stdio.h>
#include<ctype.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
void main(int argc,char *argv[])
{
char *str ="ab234cid*(s349*(20kd", *ptr = str;
while (*ptr) { // While there are more characters to process...
    if ( isdigit(*ptr) ) {
        // Found a number
        int val = (int)strtol(ptr,&ptr, 10); // Read number
        printf("%d\n", val); // and print it.
    } else {
        // Otherwise, move on to the next character.
        ptr++;
    }
}

}