Thread: strtok() and original string

I want to look at the problem of tokenizing a string. Calling strtok() changes the original string by placing '\0' in lieu of the tokens. I was wondering if there was a trick to avoid this. I want to leave the original string intact and preferably don't want to copy it either.

Looking at this answer on SO, what does this poster mean??

C strtok() split string into tokens but keep old data unaltered - Stack Overflow

Unfortunately, strtok works by modifying the source string, so if you want to use strtok, the only way to leave the original string intact is to copy it and then run strtok on the copy. The advantage of strtok doing this is that if you don't care for original string remaining intact, then by recording pointers to the tokens, you could save on having to allocate additional space for the tokens because they would occupy the same storage as the original string.

Originally Posted by wiqxlzxsxj

Looking at this answer on SO, what does this poster mean??

That's just telling you to make a copy of the string content itself rather than merely making a copy of a pointer to the string content.