How to parse out integers from a line with characters and integers - c++

Question

For a C/C++ assignment, I need to take an input line, starting with the character 's', followed by UP TO 3 separate integers. My issue is that, without vectors, I don't know how to account for an unknown number of integers (1-20).
For example, a test input would look like:
s 1 12 20
It was suggested to me to use cin.getline and take the whole line as a string, but how would I know where each integer would lie in a character array because of the possibility of single or double digits, let alone the number of integers in said string?

Answer 1

Construct a std::istringstream from the contents of the line, then keep using operator>> into an int, until it fail()s, stuffing each integer into a std::vector (after using the operator>> initially, once, to take care of the leading character).

Answer 2

You can mimic vectors using dynamic memory allocation. Initially create an array of size 2, using int *a = new int[2];
When this array fills up, make a new array of double the size, copy the old array in the new one and reassign a to the new array. Keep doing this until you have met the requirement.
EDIT
So getting the numbers through the string stream, if the array fills up, you could do:
int changeArr(int *a, int size){
int *b = new int[size*2];
for(int i=0;i<size;i++){
b[i] = a[i];
}
a = b;
return size*2;
}
int getNos(istringstream ss){
int *a = new int[2];
int cap = 2, i=0, number;
while(ss){
if(i>=cap){
cap = changeArr(a, cap);
}
ss >> a[i];
i++;
}
}
I have skipped the part about the first character, but I guess you can handle that.

Answer 3

Without vectors, you have a couple of approaches. (1) read an entire line at a time and tokenize the line with strtok or strsep, or (2) use the standard features built into strtol to walk down the string separating values with the pointer and end-pointer parameters to the function.
Since you know the format, you can easily use either. Both 1 & 2 above do the same thing, you are just using the tools in strtol to both tokenize and convert to a number in a single step. Here is a short example for handling a string followed by an unknown number of digits on each line:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <limits.h>
#include <errno.h>
enum { BASE = 10, MAXC = 512 };
long xstrtol (char *p, char **ep, int base);
int main (void) {
char buf[MAXC] = "";
while (fgets (buf, MAXC, stdin)) { /* for each line of input */
char *p, *ep; /* declare pointers */
p = buf; /* reset values */
errno = 0;
printf ("\n%s\n", p); /* print the original full buffer */
/* locate 1st digit in string */
for (; *p && (*p < '0' || '9' < *p); p++) {}
if (!*p) { /* validate digit found */
fprintf (stderr, "warning: no digits in '%s'\n", buf);
continue;
}
/* separate integer values */
while (errno == 0)
{ int idx = 0;
long val;
/* parse/convert each number in line into long value */
val = xstrtol (p, &ep, BASE);
if (val < INT_MIN || INT_MAX < val) { /* validate int value */
fprintf (stderr, "warning: value exceeds range of integer.\n");
continue;
}
printf (" int[%2d]: %d\n", idx++, (int) val); /* output int */
/* skip delimiters/move pointer to next digit */
while (*ep && *ep != '-' && (*ep < '0' || *ep > '9')) ep++;
if (*ep)
p = ep;
else
break;
}
}
return 0;
}
/** a simple strtol implementation with error checking.
* any failed conversion will cause program exit. Adjust
* response to failed conversion as required.
*/
long xstrtol (char *p, char **ep, int base)
{
errno = 0;
long val = strtol (p, ep, base);
/* Check for various possible errors */
if ((errno == ERANGE && (val == LONG_MIN || val == LONG_MAX)) ||
(errno != 0 && val == 0)) {
perror ("strtol");
exit (EXIT_FAILURE);
}
if (*ep == p) {
fprintf (stderr, "No digits were found\n");
exit (EXIT_FAILURE);
}
return val;
}
(the xstrtol function just moves the normal error checking to a function to unclutter the main body of the code)
Example Input
$ cat dat/varyint.txt
some string 1, 2, 3
another 4 5
one more string 6 7 8 9
finally 10
Example Use/Output
$ ./bin/strtolex <dat/varyint.txt
some string 1, 2, 3
int[ 0]: 1
int[ 1]: 2
int[ 2]: 3
another 4 5
int[ 0]: 4
int[ 1]: 5
one more string 6 7 8 9
int[ 0]: 6
int[ 1]: 7
int[ 2]: 8
int[ 3]: 9
finally 10
int[ 0]: 10
You can provide a bit of tidying up, but this method can be used to parse an unknown number of values reliably. Look it over and let me know if you have any questions.

Answer 4

Since vectors aren't allowed, you'll need to find out how many numbers are in the line before you can make an array to hold them.
I won't just give you the entire code, since this is homework, but I'll show you what I would do to solve your problem.
If your lines will always look like this: "s number" or "s number number" or "s number number number", then you can easily find the number of numbers in the line by counting the spaces!
There will be one space in any string with one number (between the s and that number), and one more space for each number that follows the first.
So let's count the spaces!
int countSpaces(string s) {
int count = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < s.size(); i++) {
if (s[i] == ' ') {
count++;
}
}
return count;
}
Passing these strings:
string test1 = "s 123 4 99999";
string test2 = "s 1";
string test3 = "s 555 1337";
to the countSpaces function will give us:
3
1
2
And with that information, we can make an array with the correct size to hold each value!
EDIT
Now I realize that you're having trouble grabbing the numbers from the string.
What I would do, is use the above method to find the number of numbers in the line. Then, I would use the std::string.find() function to determine where, and if, any spaces are in the string.
So let's say we had the line: s 123 45 678
countSpaces would tell us we have 3 numbers.
Then we make an array to hold our three numbers. I would also cut off the s part so you don't have to worry about it anymore. Note that you can use std::stoi to turn a string into a number!
Now we can loop while find(' ') doesn't return -1.
In our loop, I would take the substring from 0 to the first space, like so:
num = std::stoi( myLine.substr(0, myLine.find(' ') )
Then you can cut off the part you just used:
myLine = myLine.substr( myLine.find(' ') );
This will grab a number off the front of your string, then chop off that number from the string, and repeat the process while there is still a space in the string.
EDIT:
If you aren't guaranteed to have one space between each number, then you can delete excess spaces before doing this method or you can do it during the countSpaces loop. At that point, it would make more sense to call the function countNums or such.
An example function to remove stretches of spaces and replace them with one space:
void removeExtraSpaces(string s) {
bool inSpaces = (s[0] == ' ');
for (int i = 1; i < s.size(); i++) {
if (s[i] == ' ') {
if(inSpaces) {
s.erase(i);
} else {
inSpaces = true;
}
} else if(inSpaces) {
inSpaces = false;
}
}
}