Extracting strings from a buffer

Hi.

I am trying to extract a series of strings that are put together in a buffer like this:

David_Smith__monkey___555-1435__555-1323__test.com_

one _ equals one VTAB.

The strings should be inserted in a struct, the struct looks like this:
struct Contact {
char fname[50];
char sname[50];
char nmame[50];
char home[50];
char next[50];
char temp[50];
};

So, Devid should go in fname, Smith in sname, nname should be skipped since there is nothing between the two TABS, etc.

I am stuck so any help would be very appreciated.
/MoonSire

This looks like a job for sscanf. Then again, you said that empty fields are allowed, so it may be more convenient to manually parse or take advantage of some of the string searching functions in string.h. What have you tried so far?

How about this:

Code:

... CENSORED
 
    char  *sep = strtok(buff, DELIM);

    if (sep != NULL)
    {
      strcpy(ct.fname, sep);
      sep = strtok(NULL, DELIM);
     
... CENSORED

Originally Posted by MoonSire

David_Smith__monkey___555-1435__555-1323__test.com_

one _ equals one VTAB.

[...]

So, Devid should go in fname, Smith in sname, nname should be skipped since there is nothing between the two TABS, etc.

Originally Posted by Micko

How about this:

Code:

    char  *sep = strtok(buff, DELIM);
    if (sep != NULL)
    {
      strcpy(ct.fname, sep);
      sep = strtok(NULL, DELIM);

strtok doesn't handle multiple consecutive delimiters in the desired fashion.

Perhaps one of these instead:

• Parsing a String into Tokens Using sscanf
• Parsing a String into Tokens Using strcspn 1
• Parsing a String into Tokens Using strcspn 2
• Parsing a String into Tokens Using strcspn 3

You'll also need a function to subsitute the occurrence of 'a' with the letter 'e'.


Quzah.

On the link for using strcspn Part 1, I didnt think the following line was legal c code

Code:

printf("line %d:\n", ++k);

Maybe I mis-understood the concept of a sequence point from the c faq.
http://c-faq.com/expr/seqpoints.html

and
http://c-faq.com/expr/evalorder2.html

What's wrong with it? k is only being evaluated once, so there is no ambiguity about the expression. If k was used twice in the expression, then you might have trouble. In this case there is no trouble.

Originally Posted by Dave_Sinkula

strtok doesn't handle multiple consecutive delimiters in the desired fashion.

You're right, I didn't pay attention

Thanks guys!

I completely overlooked›sscanf so my solution was extracting each char from the buffer and inserting it into the struct with an array of pointers to each variable in the struct

I tried using this one:

#include <stdio.h>
..
int main(void)
{
const char line[] = "2004/12/03 12:01:59;info1;info2;info3";
const char *ptr = line;
char field [ 32 ];
int n;
while ( sscanf(ptr, "%31[^;]%n", field, &n) == 1 )
{
printf("field = \"%s\"\n", field);
ptr += n; /* advance the pointer by the number of characters read */
if ( *ptr != ';' )
{
break; /* didn't find an expected delimiter, done? */
}
++ptr; /* skip the delimiter */
}
return 0;
}

But modified it with a "[^\t]" instead of the "[^;] and changed the line to "David\tapa\tkorv\tfillefjong\t104510\t\tnisse ";
But the only output I get then is
field = "David"

I looked in man page for sscanf and the way I understand it nothing else should need to be changed...Am I wrong?

Aside from not using code tags...

Shouldn't you also change the break condition?


Quzah.

well well, i'm off to bed

thanks quzah!