Splitting a comma-delimited string of integers - c

Question

My background is not in C (it's in Real Studio - similar to VB) and I'm really struggling to split a comma-delimited string since I'm not used to low-level string handling.
I'm sending strings to an Arduino over serial. These strings are commands in a certain format. For instance:
#20,2000,5!
#10,423,0!
'#' is the header indicating a new command and '!' is the terminating footer marking the end of a command. The first integer after '#' is the command id and the remaining integers are data (the number of integers passed as data may be anywhere from 0 - 10 integers).
I've written a sketch that gets the command (stripped of the '#' and '!') and calls a function called handleCommand() when there is a command to handle. The problem is, I really don't know how to split this command up to handle it!
Here's the sketch code:
String command; // a string to hold the incoming command
boolean commandReceived = false; // whether the command has been received in full
void setup() {
// put your setup code here, to run once:
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
// main loop
handleCommand();
}
void serialEvent(){
while (Serial.available()) {
// all we do is construct the incoming command to be handled in the main loop
// get the incoming byte from the serial stream
char incomingByte = (char)Serial.read();
if (incomingByte == '!')
{
// marks the end of a command
commandReceived = true;
return;
}
else if (incomingByte == '#')
{
// marks the start of a new command
command = "";
commandReceived = false;
return;
}
else
{
command += incomingByte;
return;
}
}
}
void handleCommand() {
if (!commandReceived) return; // no command to handle
// variables to hold the command id and the command data
int id;
int data[9];
// NOT SURE WHAT TO DO HERE!!
// flag that we've handled the command
commandReceived = false;
}
Say my PC sends the Arduino the string "#20,2000,5!". My sketch ends up with a String variable (called command) that contains "20,2000,5" and the commandRecieved boolean variable is set to True so the handleCommand() function is called.
What I would like to do in the (currently useless) handleCommand() function is assign 20 to a variable called id and 2000 and 5 to an array of integers called data, i.e: data[0] = 2000, data[1] = 5, etc.
I've read about strtok() and atoi() but frankly I just can't get my head around them and the concept of pointers. I'm sure my Arduino sketch could be optimised too.

Answer 1

Since you're using the Arduino core String type, strtok and other string.h functions aren't appropriate. Note that you can change your code to use standard C null-terminated strings instead, but using Arduino String will let you do this without using pointers.
The String type gives you indexOf and substring.
Assuming a String with the # and ! stripped off, finding your command and arguments would look something like this:
// given: String command
int data[MAX_ARGS];
int numArgs = 0;
int beginIdx = 0;
int idx = command.indexOf(",");
String arg;
char charBuffer[16];
while (idx != -1)
{
arg = command.substring(beginIdx, idx);
arg.toCharArray(charBuffer, 16);
// add error handling for atoi:
data[numArgs++] = atoi(charBuffer);
beginIdx = idx + 1;
idx = command.indexOf(",", beginIdx);
}
data[numArgs++] = command.substring(beginIdx);
This will give you your entire command in the data array, including the command number at data[0], while you've specified that only the args should be in data. But the necessary changes are minor.

Answer 2

seems to work, could be buggy:
#include<stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(){
char string[]="20,2000,5";
int a,b,c;
sscanf(string,"%i,%i,%i",&a,&b,&c);
printf("%i %i %i\n",a,b,c);
a=b=c=0;
a=atoi(strtok(string,","));
b=atoi(strtok(0,","));
c=atoi(strtok(0,","));
printf("%i %i %i\n",a,b,c);
return 0;
}