How to scan multiple words using sscanf in C? - c

Question

I'm trying to scan a line that contains multiple words in C. Is there a way to scan it word by word and store each word as a different variable?
For example, I have the following types of lines:
A is the 1 letter;
B is the 2 letter;
C is the 3 letter;
If I'm parsing through the first line: "A is the 1 letter" and I have the following code, what do I put in each case so I can get the individual tokens and store them as variables. To clarify, by the end of this code, I want "is," "the," "1," "letter" in different variables.
I have the following code:
while (feof(theFile) != 1) {
string = "A is the 1 letter"
first_word = sscanf(string);
switch(first_word):
case "A":
what to put here?
case "B":
what to put here?
...

Answer 1

You shouldn't use feof() like that. You should use fgets() or equivalent. You probably need to use the little-known (but present in standard C89) conversion specifier %n.
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
char buffer[1024];
while (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin) != 0)
{
char *str = buffer;
char word[256];
int posn;
while (sscanf(str, "%255s%n", word, &posn) == 1)
{
printf("Word: <<%s>>\n", word);
str += posn;
}
}
return(0);
}
This reads a line, then uses sscanf() iteratively to fetch words from the line. The %n format specifier doesn't count towards the successful conversions, hence the comparison with 1. Note the use of %255s to prevent overflows in word. Note too that sscanf() could write a null after the 255 count specified in the conversion specification, hence the difference of one between the declaration of char word[256]; and the conversion specifier %255s.
Clearly, it is up to you to decide what to do with each word as it is extracted; the code here simply prints it.
One advantage of this technique over any solution based on strtok() is that sscanf() does not modify the input string so if you need to report an error, you have the original input line to use in the error report.
After editing the question, it seems that the punctuation like semi-colon is not wanted in a word; the code above would include punctuation as part of the word. In that case, you have to think a bit harder about what to do. The starting point might well be using and alphanumeric scan-set as the conversion specification in place of %255s:
"%255[a-zA-Z_0-9]%n"
You probably then have to look at what's in the character at the start of the next component and skip it if it is not alphanumeric:
if (!isalnum((unsigned char)*str))
{
if (sscanf(str, "%*[^a-zA-Z_0-9]%n", &posn) == 0)
str += posn;
}
Leading to:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
int main(void)
{
char buffer[1024];
while (fgets(buffer, sizeof(buffer), stdin) != 0)
{
char *str = buffer;
char word[256];
int posn;
while (sscanf(str, "%255[a-zA-Z_0-9]%n", word, &posn) == 1)
{
printf("Word: <<%s>>\n", word);
str += posn;
if (!isalnum((unsigned char)*str))
{
if (sscanf(str, "%*[^a-zA-Z_0-9]%n", &posn) == 0)
str += posn;
}
}
}
return(0);
}
You'll need to consider the I18N and L10N aspects of the alphanumeric ranges chosen; what's available may depend on your implementation (POSIX doesn't specify support in scanf() scan-sets for the notations such as [[:alnum:]], unfortunately).

Answer 2

You can use strtok() to tokenize or split strings. Please refer the following link for an example: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstring/strtok/
You can take array of character pointers and assign tokens to them.
Example:
char *tokens[100];
int i = 0;
char *token = strtok(string, " ");
while (token != NULL) {
tokens[i] = token;
token = strtok(NULL, " ");
i++;
}
printf("Total Tokens: %d", i);

Answer 3

Note the %s specifier strips whitespace. So you can write:
std::string s = "A is the 1 letter";
typedef char Word[128];
Word words[6];
int wordsRead = sscanf(s.c_str(), "%128s%128s%128s%128s%128s%128s", words[0], words[1], words[2], words[3], words[4], words[5] );
std::cout << wordsRead << " words read" << std::endl;
for(int i = 0;
i != wordsRead;
++i)
std::cout << "'" << words[i] << "'" << std::endl;
Note how this approach (unlike strtok), effectively requires an assumption about the maximim number of words to read, as well as their lengths.

Answer 4

I would recommend using strtok().
Here is the example from http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cstring/strtok/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main ()
{
char str[] ="- This, a sample string.";
char * pch;
printf ("Splitting string \"%s\" into tokens:\n",str);
pch = strtok (str," ,.-");
while (pch != NULL)
{
printf ("%s\n",pch);
pch = strtok (NULL, " ,.-");
}
return 0;
}
Output will be:
Splitting string "- This, a sample string." into tokens:
This
a
sample
string