finding a colon

i have the following code to find the first words of a file....but my words are seperated by ":" it tried to put : along with \n an \0 but it still doesnt find the word it just finds the whole line

len = strlen(buf[cnt]);
if (buf[cnt][len-1] == '\n')
buf[cnt][len-1] = '\0';
cnt++;

You're not testing for a ':' anywhere in that code; why do you expect it to find any colons?

i mean i did this
if (buf[cnt][len-1] == '\n')
buf[cnt][len-1] = '\0';
buf[cnt][len-1] = ':';

I am not sure what you are trying to do, are you trying to parse a line and find the words seperated with a ':' because that code is not going to do the trick. You need to test if the characater you have reached is a ':' and if so do something ;). And in the fure use code tags.

i am just trying to get the first words of each line of a file(or an array)....and the lines of the files are seperated by ":"
example
a:b:d
ddd:dfd:dfd

so that i can get "a" from the first line and "ddd" from the second line

read in the line, parse the line, when you have found the first semicolon you know where the word ends. Repeat with next line.

i have read the lines......but how to match it with the first occurence of ":"

step through the array and check every character to see if its a ':'. If that is not what you mean then Im sorry but you got me confused.

You might want to look at the strchr() function.

I wouldn't recommend the strchr for him. because he wants to parse it more than once and to do that he/she would need to use pointers. Here is a hint

Code:

---

while(there is a line to get){
  counter=0;
  if line[counter] == ':'{
      for(x=0;x<counter;counter++)
          put the line[counter] to stdout
  }
}

---

[edit]on second thought. You could just print until you get a : or a newline or \0. Whatever you want[/edit]

Or you could use strtok() and just pass ":" as the delimiter.

How you implement your code is going to depend on what you actually want to do (and want not to do) with your data.

- strchr()
will work just fine. Using it, you can find out where the first colon is, therefore giving you the length of the first word. But it doesn't add a \0 where the colon is. This can be good if you don't want to destroy the original array, but bad if you want the use the first word as a string.

- strtok()
will work similar to strchr(), but will replace the colon with a \0. The original array is altered, and you can use the first word as a string. This can be either good or bad, depending on what you want.

- custom code
you can write your own code to achieve the same results as above.

Also think about strncpy(), or maybe even these functions.

Obvious answer: It's what your head is in. ;)

Quzah.