Purpose of isspace??

My assigment was to figure out the prototype of the isspace, which I get. However, every site just states that it detects if it is a space or not. When will this function ever be used in actual programming? When would one need to use isspace?

~Thanks for your help!

It's not just a space character that it detects (yes, the name they chose for the function is unfortunate). It detects whether the character you pass is whitespace (i.e. spaces, tabs, CR, LF...).

But in what situation would this be useful? Why would one need to detect a whitespace?

Well if you read in a bunch of text and wanted to separate each word, you would look for the end of a word by looking for the first whitespace character right?

Wouldn't that whitespace already be separating each word? That's what you use to separate each word in the first place: a space/tab/carriage return/etc.

~Sorry I know this probably sounds really simple, but I've only just finished one semester of computer science.

Originally Posted by aznprincess888

Wouldn't that whitespace already be separating each word? That's what you use to separate each word in the first place: a space/tab/carriage return/etc.

Exactly. So don't you think that being able to identify such characters might be important?

Originally Posted by brewbuck

Exactly. So don't you think that being able to identify such characters might be important?

No? I mean, it's already separated for you right? So I guess my question is, what's the point of identifying these whitespaces? What good would that do you?

I mean, it's already separated for you right? So I guess my question is, what's the point of identifying these whitespaces? What good would that do you?

How would you tell the bounaries of the words if you are reading them character by character?

Originally Posted by aznprincess888

No? I mean, it's already separated for you right? So I guess my question is, what's the point of identifying these whitespaces? What good would that do you?

Separated? Who separated it? When you look on the screen you see words because of your brain. The computer has no brain.

What if you want to find a certain word in a string of words and put it into a separate string...?

You read in text as a stream of data. Some of that data might represent a space, a tab, some might represent a return or a character. You don't know until you read it in and test it. When you test it, it would be something like this:

Code:

if (my_char == ' ' || my_char == '\n' ||my_char == '\r' ||my_char == '\t')
{
    //is whitespace
}

wouldn't it be it be easier to do this?

Code:

if (isspace(my_char))
{
    //is whitespace
}

It's the basic concept of function encapsulation. Once you understand this, you'll understand a large part of C code.

Originally Posted by cpjust

What if you want to find a certain word in a string of words and put it into a separate string...?

And why exactly would you want to find a particular word in the string?
(sorry, I know how frustrating this might seem to some of you, I'm just so confused!)

Originally Posted by aznprincess888

And why exactly would you want to find a particular word in the string?

Why would you want to program a computer?

And why exactly would you want to find a particular word in the string?

Have you ever used the search function provided by your browser, editor, or word processor?

Originally Posted by aznprincess888

And why exactly would you want to find a particular word in the string?
(sorry, I know how frustrating this might seem to some of you, I'm just so confused!)

Well think about how you would implement something like a keyword parser for an anti-spam program. You'd look for certain words that spammers use a lot and give each word a certain score. If the total score exceeds a certain threshold, you mark the message as spam.
So looking for particular words would be pretty useful there.