Split and Join strings in C Language - c

Question

I learnt C in uni but haven't used it for quite a few years. Recently I started working on a tool which uses C as the programming language. Now I'm stuck with some really basic functions. Among them are how to split and join strings using a delimiter? (I miss Python so much, even Java or C#!)
Below is the function I created to split a string, but it does not seem to work properly. Also, even this function works, the delimiter can only be a single character. How can I use a string as a delimiter?
Can someone please provide some help?
Ideally, I would like to have 2 functions:
// Split a string into a string array
char** fSplitStr(char *str, const char *delimiter);
// Join the elements of a string array to a single string
char* fJoinStr(char **str, const char *delimiter);
Thank you,
Allen
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
char** fSplitStr(char *str, const char *delimiters)
{
char * token;
char **tokenArray;
int count=0;
token = (char *)strtok(str, delimiters); // Get the first token
tokenArray = (char**)malloc(1 * sizeof(char*));
if (!token) {
return tokenArray;
}
while (token != NULL ) { // While valid tokens are returned
tokenArray[count] = (char*)malloc(sizeof(token));
tokenArray[count] = token;
printf ("%s", tokenArray[count]);
count++;
tokenArray = (char **)realloc(tokenArray, sizeof(char *) * count);
token = (char *)strtok(NULL, delimiters); // Get the next token
}
return tokenArray;
}
int main (void)
{
char str[] = "Split_The_String";
char ** splitArray = fSplitStr(str,"_");
printf ("%s", splitArray[0]);
printf ("%s", splitArray[1]);
printf ("%s", splitArray[2]);
return 0;
}
Answers: (Thanks to Moshbear, Joachim and sarnold):
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
char** fStrSplit(char *str, const char *delimiters)
{
char * token;
char **tokenArray;
int count=0;
token = (char *)strtok(str, delimiters); // Get the first token
tokenArray = (char**)malloc(1 * sizeof(char*));
tokenArray[0] = NULL;
if (!token) {
return tokenArray;
}
while (token != NULL) { // While valid tokens are returned
tokenArray[count] = (char*)strdup(token);
//printf ("%s", tokenArray[count]);
count++;
tokenArray = (char **)realloc(tokenArray, sizeof(char *) * (count + 1));
token = (char *)strtok(NULL, delimiters); // Get the next token
}
tokenArray[count] = NULL; /* Terminate the array */
return tokenArray;
}
char* fStrJoin(char **str, const char *delimiters)
{
char *joinedStr;
int i = 1;
joinedStr = realloc(NULL, strlen(str[0])+1);
strcpy(joinedStr, str[0]);
if (str[0] == NULL){
return joinedStr;
}
while (str[i] !=NULL){
joinedStr = (char*)realloc(joinedStr, strlen(joinedStr) + strlen(str[i]) + strlen(delimiters) + 1);
strcat(joinedStr, delimiters);
strcat(joinedStr, str[i]);
i++;
}
return joinedStr;
}
int main (void)
{
char str[] = "Split_The_String";
char ** splitArray = (char **)fStrSplit(str,"_");
char * joinedStr;
int i=0;
while (splitArray[i]!=NULL) {
printf ("%s", splitArray[i]);
i++;
}
joinedStr = fStrJoin(splitArray, "-");
printf ("%s", joinedStr);
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Use strpbrk instead of strtok, because strtok suffers from two weaknesses:
it's not re-entrant (i.e. thread-safe)
it modifies the string
For joining, use strncat for joining, and realloc for resizing.
The order of operations is very important.
Before doing the realloc;strncat loop, set the 0th element of the target string to '\0' so that strncat won't cause undefined behavior.

Answer 2

For starters, don't use sizeof to get the length of a string. strlen is the function to use. In this case strdup is better.
And you don't actually copy the string returned by strtok, you copy the pointer. Change you loop to this:
while (token != NULL) { // While valid tokens are returned
tokenArray[count] = strdup(token);
printf ("%s", tokenArray[count]);
count++;
tokenArray = (char **)realloc(tokenArray, sizeof(char *) * count);
token = (char *)strtok(NULL, delimiters); // Get the next token
}
tokenArray[count] = NULL; /* Terminate the array */
Also, don't forget to free the entries in the array, and the array itself when you're done with it.
Edit At the beginning of fSplitStr, wait with allocating the tokenArray until after you check that token is not NULL, and if token is NULL why not return NULL?

Answer 3

I'm not sure the best solution for you, but I do have a few notes:
token = (char *)strtok(str, delimiters); // Get the first token
tokenArray = (char**)malloc(1 * sizeof(char*));
if (!token) {
return tokenArray;
}
At this point, if you weren't able to find any tokens in the string, you return a pointer to an "array" that is large enough to hold a single character pointer. It is un-initialized, so it would not be a good idea to use the contents of this array in any way. C almost never initializes memory to 0x00 for you. (calloc(3) would do that for you, but since you need to overwrite every element anyway, it doesn't seem worth switching to calloc(3).)
Also, the (char **) case before the malloc(3) call indicates to me that you've probably forgotten the #include <stdlib.h> that would properly prototype malloc(3). (The cast was necessary before about 1989.)
Do note that your while() { } loop is setting pointers to the parts of the original input string to your tokenArray elements. (This is one of the cons that moshbear mentioned in his answer -- though it isn't always a weakness.) If you change tokenArray[1][1]='H', then your original input string also changes. (In addition to having each of the delimiter characters replaced with an ASCII NUL character.)