Reading from file

**Delia** · 03-15-2010

I have as an assigment to create as a library the next structure:

Code:

typedef struct
{
char authors[5][40]; // first and last names of the author
char title[50]; // title of the publication
unsigned int year; // year of the publication
char isbn[15]; // publication code
} PubEntryT;

In a file I have some lines as:

Code:

 "Downey, Rod G.","Hirschfeldt, Denis",,,,"Algorithmic Randomness and Complexity",2009,"978-0387955674"

How I can partition the fields using strok, having a comma as a separator?

**hk_mp5kpdw** · 03-15-2010

What (if anything) have you tried so far? Is it purely the use of strtok that you're having issues with?

**Delia** · 03-15-2010

Originally Posted by hk_mp5kpdw

What (if anything) have you tried so far? Is it purely the use of strtok that you're having issues with?

I don't know how to do it. I have a separation area between the authors and the rest of the fields ",,,".
I need some ideas how I can divide the fields.

My idea was that I first use strok(s,",,,") to separate the area of the authors from the area of the others fields and then to use strok(s,',') to separate this area into fields. But I can't. because ",,,"=",'" for the function strok. I need some other ideas. It's required to use strok.

**tabstop** · 03-15-2010

You can use , as your delimiter and then reassemble the names (you'll have to call strtok twice to get each author). But strtok skips starting tokens, so when you've gotten to

Code:

,,,"Algorithmic Randomness and Complexity",2009,"978-0387955674"

strtok will return to you

Code:

"Algorithmic Randomness and Complexity"

the next time through.

**Delia** · 03-15-2010

Originally Posted by tabstop

You can use , as your delimiter and then reassemble the names (you'll have to call strtok twice to get each author). But strtok skips starting tokens, so when you've gotten to

Code:

,,,"Algorithmic Randomness and Complexity",2009,"978-0387955674"

strtok will return to you

Code:

"Algorithmic Randomness and Complexity"

the next time through.

The problem is that I don't know how many authors do I have,It can vary from 1-5. So I don't know how many times I have to use strok before entering the next area of fileds.
eg.:

Code:

"Knuth, Donald E.",,,,,"The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 1: Bitwise Tricks & Techniques; Binary Decision Diagrams",2009,"978-0321580508" 
"Glass, Graham","Ables, King",,,,"UNIX for Programmers and Users (3rd Edition)",2003,"978-0130465535" 
"McAllister, William","Smith, John","Calgary,Owen",,,,,"Data Structures and Algorithms Using Java",2008,"978-0763757564"

**quzah** · 03-15-2010

Code:

while fgets returns something of value
    while strtok returns something of value
        do something with whatever strtok spits out

Quzah.

**tabstop** · 03-15-2010

If it were me, I'm pretty sure I want to use " as my delimiter, more than comma. I could either use read-ahead, something like: if the next character I'm looking it is a quote mark, chomp it and then use strtok to go to the matching quote, and then chomp the comma; if the next character is a comma, then assume the field is blank and chomp it; if the next character is something else, then go to comma.

Or I could grab all the fields, note that the one field without quotes is the year, the one before that is the title, and all the fields before that one were authors.

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