How to read a word between two spaces?

[yuzhangoscar]

Hi all:

I have assigned a task to basically process a text file. One typical line of text in the file is shown below:

long custid - 4 - 12 "no bugs"

There are 7 fields in total:
1: long
2: custid
3: -
4: 4
5: -
6: 12
7: "no bugs"


I need to read out each of the field individually.

How do I start?

Cheers

[tabstop]

The only problem presumably is field 7? Or might field 2 have spaces in it too? You could just read in the first six fields, and then the rest of the line would have to be field 7.

Edit: Or you could use scansets instead of %s to get field 7 too. You'd have to add the quotes back yourself, though.

[matsp]

Typically, when parts of the input is wrapped in delimiters ("..." in this case), then you need to read the input either as a long line and separate the line in your code, or read a character at a time, keeping track of what happens in each special case. Something like this:

   read a character. 
   case space:
      terminate this field
      field ++
   case quote:
     do 
        read next character
        if (!quote) put character into field. 
     while(!quote)
     terminate field
     field++
   case newline:
      terminate current field
      new set of fields 
      reset field
   default:
      if (valid character) 
         insert into current field. 
      else 
         produce error.

--
Mats