how to split a string using space delimiter in C unix?

Question

I am new in C programming, my training uses Redhat, Unix and I already spent my day searching for a solution. I know manipulating a string in C is difficult for me as beginner.

How can I split the string into individual words so I can loop through them?. Or convert a string into char array to be able to access individual elements.

char myString[] = "the quick brown fox";

To be exact i want to print each word of the said string into a fixed column and whenever the the string reached that number of column it will go to new line and print the sequence without splitting the word.

eg. print it within 12 columns only w/out splitting the word:

the quick 
brown fox

and not:

the quick br
own fox

..TIA

How did you do it by hand? Write some code and come back if problem occurs. — Jean-Baptiste Yunès, Jul 29 '17 at 12:13
first, `char myString = "the quick brown fox";` --> `char *myString = "the quick brown fox";` or `char myString[] = "the quick brown fox";` — BLUEPIXY, Jul 29 '17 at 12:14
And possible duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/q/15720006/440558 (disclaimer: I wrote an answer with working word-wrap code) — Some programmer dude, Jul 29 '17 at 12:16
Well, "*`char myString = "the quick brown fox";`*" isn't valid C. — alk, Jul 29 '17 at 12:20
Does `12` include newline? (BTW `the quick bro` has a length of 13 characters even if it excludes newlines.) — BLUEPIXY, Jul 29 '17 at 12:26
excuse for my typo guys, my only question is to split a string using delimiter. i already used string token and string sep but didn't work. — lambda, Jul 29 '17 at 12:40

clfaster · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-29T13:11:44.450

1

Your problem can be split into two parts, part A you need to split the sentence into words and part B you need to print a maximum of x characters per line.

Part A - Split the String

Take a look at the strok function. You can use space as the delimiter.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
// You need this line if you use Visual Studio
#pragma warning(disable : 4996)

int main()
{
    char myString[] = "the quick brown fox";
    char* newString;
    newString= strtok(myString, " ,.-");
    while (newString!= NULL)
    {
        printf("%s\n", newString);
        newString= strtok(NULL, " ,.-");
    }

    return 0;
}

Output:

the
quick
brown
fox

Part B

Now you want to print the words and insert a newline when you reach the max columns 12 in your example. You need to check the length of every extracted word, you can use strlen for that. When the string is to long you insert a newline...

Hope it helped, if something is unclear leave a comment.

edited Jul 29 '17 at 13:11

answered Jul 29 '17 at 12:30

clfaster

1,450
19
26

what's your code? – clfaster Jul 29 '17 at 12:44
I added more code, in the loop I print word for word and then a newline. You can writer there an if/else newline or space – clfaster Jul 29 '17 at 13:05
I'm sorry I can't help you more when you don't post more code and context. What system do you use? The code definitly works... – clfaster Jul 29 '17 at 13:12

how to split a string using space delimiter in C unix?

1 Answers1

Part A - Split the String

Part B