Splitting a Character string in C programming

Question

I need to split a string and need to store in two seperate variables. The string contains a tab space. so it need to be seperated from the tab space

EG: the string looks like this

Sony <TAB>         A Hindi channel.

I need to store Sony in one variable say char a[6]; and A Hindi Channel in another Variable say char b[20];

How can do this?

Do you need to keep the tab characters, i.e. should `foo\tbar` result in `foo\t` and `bar` or in `foo` and `bar`? What about if there are two subsequent separators, e.g. `foo\t\tbar`. — Frerich Raabe, Oct 10 '13 at 07:51
A dirty but simple solution would be to copy characters from the source string until you see the tab, skip it, and copy all the rest in another. — DrakaSAN, Oct 10 '13 at 07:54
You should look at strtok() and do some effort yourself first. If you have problems getting it to work correctly, post your code here. — fkl, Oct 10 '13 at 07:54

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 16 '13 at 11:45

1

Probably the strtok function is that you are looking

edited Oct 16 '13 at 11:45

answered Oct 10 '13 at 07:54

brainstream

451
4
17

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:10

Tokenize string for a lot of programming language: link

In your case < tab > is a special character and it can be indicated as '\t'.

If you are using C programming language

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

int main(void) {
  char *a[5];
  const char *s="Sony\tA Hindi channel.";
  int n=0, nn;

  char *ds=strdup(s);

  a[n]=strtok(ds, "\t");
  while(a[n] && n<4) a[++n]=strtok(NULL, "\t");

  // a[n] holds each token separated with tab

  free(ds);

  return 0;
}

For C++ without using boost library:

#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <vector>
#include <iterator>
#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>

int main() {
  std::string s = "Sony\tA Hindi channel.";
  std::vector<std::string> v;
  std::istringstream buf(s);
  for(std::string token; getline(buf, token, '\t'); )
      v.push_back(token);
  // elements of v vector holds each token
}

Using C++ and boost: How to tokenize a string in C++

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/foreach.hpp>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>

using namespace std;
using namespace boost;

int main(int, char**) {
  string text = "Sony\tA Hindi channel.";

  char_separator<char> sep("\t");
  tokenizer< char_separator<char> > tokens(text, sep);
  BOOST_FOREACH (const string& t, tokens) {
      cout << t << "." << endl;
  }
}

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 10 '13 at 08:16

My C is old but something like that should work:

#include <stdio.h>


int getTabPosition (char str [])
{
    int i = 0;
    //While we didn t get out of the string
    while (i < strlen(str))
    {
        //Check if we get TAB
        if (str[i] == '\t')
            //return it s position
            return i;
        i = i + 1;
    }
    //If we get out of the string, return the error
    return -1;
}

int main () {
    int n = 0;
    //Source
    char str [50] = "";
    //First string of the output
    char out1 [50] = "";
    //Second string of the output
    char out2 [50] = "";

    scanf(str, "%s");
    n = getTabPosition(str);
    if (n == -1)
        return -1;
    //Copy the first part of the string
    strncpy(str, out1, n);
    //Copy from the end of out1 in str to the end of str
    //str[n + 1] to skip the tab
    memcpy(str[n+1], out2, strlen(str) - n);
    fprintf(stdout, "Original: %s\nout1=%s\nout2=%s", str, out1, out2);
    return 0;
}

Untested, but the principe is there

It is not worth computing `strlen(str)` at every iteration in the `while` loop which could simply be `while (str[i] != (char)0)` — Basile Starynkevitch, Oct 10 '13 at 10:06
@BasileStarynkevitch: I didn t thought of that, I ve editted with your code. Thanks for the reminder. — DrakaSAN, Oct 10 '13 at 12:06

Splitting a Character string in C programming

3 Answers3