C - Nested loop using strtok - c

I am trying to use strtok to split up a text file into strings that I can pass to a spell check function, the text file includes characters such as '\n', ' ?!,.' etc...
I need to print any words that fail the spell check and the line number that they are on. Keeping track of the line is what I'm struggling with.
I have tried this so far but it only returns results for the first line of the text file:
char str[409377];
fread(str, noOfChars, 1, file);
fclose(file);
int lines=1;
char *token;
char *line;
char splitLine[] = "\n";
char delimiters[] = " ,.?!(){}*&^%$£_-+=";
line = strtok(str, splitLine);
while(line!=NULL){
token = strtok(line, delimiters);
while(token != NULL){
//print is just to test if I can loop through all the words
printf("%s", token);
//spellCheck function & logic here
token = strtok(NULL, delimiters);
}
line = strtok(NULL, splitLine);
lines++
}
Is using the nested while loop and strtok possible? Is there a better way to keep track of the line number?

The strtok function is not reentrant! It can not be used to tokenize multiple strings simultaneously. It's because it keeps internal state about the string currently being tokenized.
If you have a modern compiler and standard library then you could use strtok_s instead. Otherwise you have to come up with another solution.

You can use strtok, but it's not very easy to use. It's a stupid function, all it really does is replace delimiters with nuls and return a pointer to the start of the sequence it has delimited. So it's destructive. It can't handle special cases like English words being allowed one apostrophe (we're is a word, we'r'e is not), you have to make sure you list all the delimiters specifically.
It's probably best to write mystrok yourself, so you understand how it works. Then use that as the basis for your own word extractor.
The reason for your bug is that you chop off the first line, then that is all that strok sees on the subsequent calls.

Related

How to compare strings in C without hard coding the increments?

I have a buffer that holds a string from a CSV file that I opened and read. I split the string up by using strtok() and split on the " , ". So now my string looks like this:
char buff[BUFFER_SIZE] = "1000" "CAP_SETPCAP" "CAP_NET_RAW"
I want to make comparisons now for each section of the string, but for the life of me I cannot get it to work. I want to be able to do it without hard coding anything meaning I don't want to assume how many spaces I need to move over. For example to start at CAP_SETPCAP I don't want to have to put buff+5. Anybody know a better way to handle this?
#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<string.h>
#define BUFFER_SIZE 1024
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
FILE *fp = fopen("csvtest.csv", "r");
char buff[BUFFER_SIZE];
fgets(buff, 1024, fp);
char *csvData = strtok(buff, ",");
while(csvData != NULL){
csvData = strtok(NULL, ",");
}
int i;
while(buff[i] != '\0'){
strcmp(buff, "CAP_NET_RAW")
printf("Match found");
i++;
}
//or I wanted to do string comparison, but I kept getting
//segmentation fault (core dumped)
char *found;
found = strstr(buff, "CAP_NET_RAW");
printf("%s\n", found);
fclose(fp);
return 0;
}
Your code has three different sections. Lets analyze them:
1. The strtok section
You get the data from the file and then you iterate on strtok:
fgets(buff, 1024, fp);
char *csvData = strtok(buff, ",");
while(csvData != NULL){
csvData = strtok(NULL, ",");
}
You seem not interested in what you found in the different positions: in fact csvData is always overwritten with the last token. And at last it is equal to NULL.
The only thing you get is having the commas in the original array buff overwritten with '\0'. Printing buff you will only see "1000", because after this substring there is the string terminator placed by strtok.
2. Searching "CAP_NET_RAW"
You now iterate on buff[i] until the string terminator. But the string terminator is after the first substring "1000"!
int i;
while(buff[i] != '\0'){
strcmp(buff, "CAP_NET_RAW")
printf("Match found");
i++;
}
Furthermore you search for CAP_NET_RAW, but even without the inner-terminators-issue, the comparison would never succeed. That's because (1) the string actually present in buff is "CAP_NET_RAW" (with double quotes); (2) that token is the last of the row, an it sitll will have the trailing '\n' (fgets doesn't remove it).
By the way: I copied the code after your edit, and now there's no check on strcmp() return value. I suppose it is a typo. Note: strcmp returns 0 if the string match.
3. The strstr attempt
Finally you look for the string using the strstr function. That's a clever idea. But as already said before, buff doesn't contain it. Well, the buffer actually do contain it, but string utilities will stop at the first '\0' they found.
char *found;
found = strstr(buff, "CAP_NET_RAW");
printf("%s\n", found);
So found will be NULL, and dereferencing a NULL pointer (that's what %s tells printf to do) will lead to a segmentation fault.
4. Conclusions
As a very simple way to find the only string you care of, I suggest to use only strstr, without using strtok before. Alternatively you can still use strtok, but saving tokens in different strings so that you can access them later.

Tokenizing a string when encountered a newline - Not working newline is not getting recognized

I am trying to tokenize a string when encountered a newline.
rest = strdup(value);
while ((token = strtok_r(rest,"\n", &rest))) {
snprintf(new_value, MAX_BANNER_LEN + 1, "%s\n", token);
}
where 'value' is a string say, "This is an example\nHere is a newline"
But the above function is not tokenizing the 'value' and the 'new_value' variable comes as it is i.e. "This is an example\nHere is a newline".
Any suggestions to overcome this?
Thanks,
Poornima
Several things going on with your code:
strtok and strtok_r take the string to tokenize as first parameter. Subsequent tokenizations of the same string should pass NULL. (It is okay to tokenize the same string with different delimiters.)
The second parameter is a string of possible separators. In your case you should pass "\n". (strtok_r will treat stretches of the characters as single break. That means that tokenizing "a\n\n\nb" will produce two tokens.)
The third parameter to strtok_r is an internal parameter to the function. It will mark where the next tokenization should start, but you need not use it. Just define a char * and pass its address.
Especially, don't repurpose the source string variable as state. In your example, you will lose the handle to the strduped string, so that you cannot free it later, as you should.
It is not clear how you determine that your tokenization "doesn't work". You print the token to the same char buffer repeatedly. Do you want to keep only the part after the last newline? In that case, use strchrr(str, '\n'). If the result isn't NULL it is your "tail". If it is NULL the whole string is your tail.
Here's how tokenizing a string could work:
char *rest = strdup(str);
char *state;
char *token = strtok_r(rest, "\n", &state);
while (token) {
printf("'%s'\n", token);
token = strtok_r(NULL, "\n", &state);
}
free(rest);

Using sscanf to read strings

I am trying to save one character and 2 strings into variables.
I use sscanf to read strings with the following form :
N "OldName" "NewName"
What I want : char character = 'N' , char* old_name = "OldName" , char* new_name = "NewName" .
This is how I am trying to do it :
sscanf(mystring,"%c %s %s",&character,old_name,new_name);
printf("%c %s %s",character,old_name,new_name);
The problem is , my problem stops working without any outputs .
(I want to ignore the quotation marks too and save only its content)
When you do
char* new_name = "NewName";
you make the pointer new_name point to the read-only string array containing the constant string literal. The array contains exactly 8 characters (the letters of the string plus the terminator).
First of all, using that pointer as a destination for scanf will cause scanf to write to the read-only array, which leads to undefined behavior. And if you give a string longer than 7 character then scanf will also attempt to write out of bounds, again leading to undefined behavior.
The simple solution is to use actual arrays, and not pointers, and to also tell scanf to not read more than can fit in the arrays. Like this:
char old_name[64]; // Space for 63 characters plus string terminator
char new_name[64];
sscanf(mystring,"%c %63s %63s",&character,old_name,new_name);
To skip the quotation marks you have a couple of choices: Either use pointers and pointer arithmetic to skip the leading quote, and then set the string terminator at the place of the last quote to "remove" it. Another solution is to move the string to overwrite the leading quote, and then do as the previous solution to remove the last quote.
Or you could rely on the limited pattern-matching capabilities of scanf (and family):
sscanf(mystring,"%c \"%63s\" \"%63s\"",&character,old_name,new_name);
Note that the above sscanf call will work iff the string actually includes the quotes.
Second note: As said in the comment by Cool Guy, the above won't actually work since scanf is greedy. It will read until the end of the file/string or a white-space, so it won't actually stop reading at the closing double quote. The only working solution using scanf and family is the one below.
Also note that scanf and family, when reading string using "%s" stops reading on white-space, so if the string is "New Name" then it won't work either. If this is the case, then you either need to manually parse the string, or use the odd "%[" format, something like
sscanf(mystring,"%c \"%63[^\"]\" \"%63[^\"]\"",&character,old_name,new_name);
You must allocate space for your strings, e.g:
char* old_name = malloc(128);
char* new_name = malloc(128);
Or using arrays
char old_name[128] = {0};
char new_name[128] = {0};
In case of malloc you also have to free the space before the end of your program.
free(old_name);
free(new_name);
Updated:...
The other answers provide good methods of creating memory as well as how to read the example input into buffers. There are two additional items that may help:
1) You expressed that you want to ignore the quotation marks too.
2) Reading first & last names when separated with space. (example input is not)
As #Joachim points out, because scanf and family stop scanning on a space with the %s format specifier, a name that includes a space such as "firstname lastname" will not be read in completely. There are several ways to address this. Here are two:
Method 1: tokenizing your input.
Tokenizing a string breaks it into sections separated by delimiters. Your string input examples for instance are separated by at least 3 usable delimiters: space: " ", double quote: ", and newline: \n characters. fgets() and strtok() can be used to read in the desired content while at the same time strip off any undesired characters. If done correctly, this method can preserve the content (even spaces) while removing delimiters such as ". A very simple example of the concept below includes the following steps:
1) reading stdin into a line buffer with fgets(...)
2) parse the input using strtok(...).
Note: This is an illustrative, bare-bones implementation, sequentially coded to match your input examples (with spaces) and includes none of the error checking/handling that would normally be included.
int main(void)
{
char line[128];
char delim[] = {"\n\""};//parse using only newline and double quote
char *tok;
char letter;
char old_name[64]; // Space for 63 characters plus string terminator
char new_name[64];
fgets(line, 128, stdin);
tok = strtok(line, delim); //consume 1st " and get token 1
if(tok) letter = tok[0]; //assign letter
tok = strtok(NULL, delim); //consume 2nd " and get token 2
if(tok) strcpy(old_name, tok); //copy tok to old name
tok = strtok(NULL, delim); //consume 3rd " throw away token 3
tok = strtok(NULL, delim); //consume 4th " and get token 4
if(tok) strcpy(new_name, tok); //copy tok to new name
printf("%c %s %s\n", letter, old_name, new_name);
return 0;
}
Note: as written, this example (as do most strtok(...) implementations) require very narrowly defined input. In this case input must be no longer than 127 characters, comprised of a single character followed by space(s) then a double quoted string followed by more space(s) then another double quoted string, as defined by your example:
N "OldName" "NewName"
The following input will also work in the above example:
N "old name" "new name"
N "old name" "new name"
Note also about this example, some consider strtok() broken, while others suggest avoiding its use. I suggest using it sparingly, and only in single threaded applications.
Method 2: walking the string.
A C string is just an array of char terminated with a NULL character. By selectively copying some characters into another string, while bypassing the one you do not want (such as the "), you can effectively strip unwanted characters from your input. Here is an example function that will do this:
char * strip_ch(char *str, char ch)
{
char *from, *to;
char *dup = strdup(str);//make a copy of input
if(dup)
{
from = to = dup;//set working pointers equal to pointer to input
for (from; *from != '\0'; from++)//walk through input string
{
*to = *from;//set destination pointer to original pointer
if (*to != ch) to++;//test - increment only if not char to strip
//otherwise, leave it so next char will replace
}
*to = '\0';//replace the NULL terminator
strcpy(str, dup);
free(dup);
}
return str;
}
Example use case:
int main(void)
{
char line[128] = {"start"};
while(strstr(line, "quit") == NULL)
{
printf("Enter string (\"quit\" to leave) and hit <ENTER>:");
fgets(line, 128, stdin);
sprintf(line, "%s\n", strip_ch(line, '"'));
printf("%s", line);
}
return 0;
}

Issues reading from file into a correct "format" using strtok

I am having an issue reading in a file with a certain format using strtok.
Each line in the file contains a format as shown below:
Bill Simpson, 01452356
When I display only temp_id I get (Underscore = whitespace):
"_01452356"
The code for breaking apart each line is as follows:
while((fgets(temp_string, LENGTH, ifp))!= NULL)
{
temp_name = strtok(temp_string, comma);
temp_id = strtok(NULL, comma);
add(temp_name, temp_id);
}
I simply want temp_id to not contain whitespace.
Keep in mind that temp_name and temp_id are both arrays of type char.
I would greatly appreciate a quick solution to this issue.
You need to explicity include the space character as a delimiter.
char comma[] = ", ";
They could be the other way round
char comma[] = " ,";
because they are not a sequence, but a set of chars that may be delimiters.

String split in C with strtok function

I'm trying to do split some strings by {white_space} symbol.
btw, there is a problem within some splits. which means, I want to split by {white_space} symbol but also quoted sub-strings.
example,
char *pch;
char str[] = "hello \"Stack Overflow\" good luck!";
pch = strtok(str," ");
while (pch != NULL)
{
printf ("%s\n",pch);
pch = strtok(NULL, " ");
}
This will give me
hello
"Stack
Overflow"
good
luck!
But What I want, as you know,
hello
Stack Overflow
good
luck!
Any suggestion or idea please?
You'll need to tokenize twice. The program flow you currently have is as follows:
1) Search for space
2) Print all characters prior to space
3) Search for next space
4) Print all characters between last space, and this one.
You'll need to start thinking in a different matter, two layers of tokenization.
Search for Quotation Mark
On odd-numbered strings, perform your original program (search for spaces)
On even-numbered strings, print blindly
In this case, even numbered strings are (ideally) within quotes. ab"cd"ef would result in ab being odd, cd being even... etc.
The other side, is remembering what you need to do, and what you're actually looking for (in regex) is "[a-zA-Z0-9 \t\n]*" or, [a-zA-Z0-9]+. That means the difference between the two options, are whether it's separated by quotes. So separate by quotes, and identify from there.
Try altering your strategy.
Look at non-white space things, then when you find quoted string you can put it in one string value.
So, you need a function that examines characters, between white space. When you find '"' you can change the rules and hoover everything up to a matching '"'. If this function returns a TOKEN value and a value (the string matched) then what calls it, can decide to do the correct output. Then you have written a tokeniser, and there actually exist tools to generate them called "lexers" as they are used widely, to implement programming languages/config files.
Assuming nextc reads next char from string, begun by firstc( str) :
for (firstc( str); ((c = nextc) != NULL;) {
if (isspace(c))
continue;
else if (c == '"')
return readQuote; /* Handle Quoted string */
else
return readWord; /* Terminated by space & '"' */
}
return EOS;
You'll need to define return values for EOS, QUOTE and WORD, and a way to get the text in each Quote or Word.
Here's the code that works... in C
The idea is that you first tokenize the quote, since that's a priority (if a string is inside the quotes than we don't tokenize it, we just print it). And for each of those tokenized strings, we tokenize within that string on the space character, but we do it for alternate strings, because alternate strings will be in and out of the quotes.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
int main() {
char *pch1, *pch2, *save_ptr1, *save_ptr2;
char str[] = "hello \"Stack Overflow\" good luck!";
pch1 = strtok_r(str,"\"", &save_ptr1);
bool in = false;
while (pch1 != NULL) {
if(in) {
printf ("%s\n", pch1);
pch1 = strtok_r(NULL, "\"", &save_ptr1);
in = false;
continue;
}
pch2 = strtok_r(pch1, " ", &save_ptr2);
while (pch2 != NULL) {
printf ("%s\n",pch2);
pch2 = strtok_r(NULL, " ", &save_ptr2);
}
pch1 = strtok_r(NULL, "\"", &save_ptr1);
in = true;
}
}
References
Tokenizing multiple strings simultaneously
http://linux.die.net/man/3/strtok_r
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstring/strtok/

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