extract numbers in strings with words, punctuation and numbers

Hello,

I have to read a file which, among other data, contains here and there lines with the format

# word1 number, word2 number

word1 and word2 are always the same words, the comma is always in the same place (after the first number), but the numbers change, and could have one, two, or three digits. I need to save those numbers as ints.

Detecting the lines while reading the file is of course very easy, but extracting the numbers is proving much more difficult for me.

I tried a very add-hoc code that looks at the whole line as string and has lots of if statements, but it is not working. I also found in this forum a post about using strtok for a situation like mine, but I am still confused. I should say that I am not a programmer, but someone who needs to write a C program for research, and who has learned by imitating examples and the kind advise of people in forums like this.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
mc61

fscanf or some combination of fgets/sscanf is often used for such things. Did you try that? What did you try?

Code:

---

space  space  space  space
 #1    #2      #3    #4
#^word1^number,^word2^number

---

I used the code tags just so I could show it with a better font.

Does the position and number of spaces in each line, give you some
ideas how this could be done? ASCII # for a space is 32, btw.

I'm thinking of a while (1) loop, and then just counting the blank spaces we encounter
while going through the buffer holding this line of data. When we get to two on our
blank char count, then we take the next several char's and change them to their int values.
Do the same when blank char count == 4.

I don't believe the comma's are positioned as advantageously for your purpose, as the blank
characters are. YMMV.

No sense me repeating what you've already tried. Post your attempt (working or not), and
let's see what might be a good idea for this.

If you have formatted input, you should use the formatted input function, the little-known scanf:

Code:

---

check = sscanf(line_from_file, "# Word1 %d, Word2 %d", &i, &j);

---

If check==2, then you found two numbers. Works like a charm. (I'm assuming you already have a loop that reads successive lines into a string.)

Thank you all for the suggestions. The code

Code:

---

sscanf(line_from_file, "# Word1 %d, Word2 %d", &i, &j);

---

worked like a charm indeed!!

Thanks again,

mc61

or you could even try this

Code:

---

sscanf(ptr, "# %*s %d, %*s %d", &i, &j);

---

ssharish