Get a file name from a path - c++

What is the simplest way to get the file name that from a path?
string filename = "C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat"
In this example, I should get "MyFile". without extension.

The task is fairly simple as the base filename is just the part of the string starting at the last delimeter for folders:
std::string base_filename = path.substr(path.find_last_of("/\\") + 1)
If the extension is to be removed as well the only thing to do is find the last . and take a substr to this point
std::string::size_type const p(base_filename.find_last_of('.'));
std::string file_without_extension = base_filename.substr(0, p);
Perhaps there should be a check to cope with files solely consisting of extensions (ie .bashrc...)
If you split this up into seperate functions you're flexible to reuse the single tasks:
template<class T>
T base_name(T const & path, T const & delims = "/\\")
{
return path.substr(path.find_last_of(delims) + 1);
}
template<class T>
T remove_extension(T const & filename)
{
typename T::size_type const p(filename.find_last_of('.'));
return p > 0 && p != T::npos ? filename.substr(0, p) : filename;
}
The code is templated to be able to use it with different std::basic_string instances (i.e. std::string & std::wstring...)
The downside of the templation is the requirement to specify the template parameter if a const char * is passed to the functions.
So you could either:
A) Use only std::string instead of templating the code
std::string base_name(std::string const & path)
{
return path.substr(path.find_last_of("/\\") + 1);
}
B) Provide wrapping function using std::string (as intermediates which will likely be inlined / optimized away)
inline std::string string_base_name(std::string const & path)
{
return base_name(path);
}
C) Specify the template parameter when calling with const char *.
std::string base = base_name<std::string>("some/path/file.ext");
Result
std::string filepath = "C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat";
std::cout << remove_extension(base_name(filepath)) << std::endl;
Prints
MyFile

A possible solution:
string filename = "C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat";
// Remove directory if present.
// Do this before extension removal incase directory has a period character.
const size_t last_slash_idx = filename.find_last_of("\\/");
if (std::string::npos != last_slash_idx)
{
filename.erase(0, last_slash_idx + 1);
}
// Remove extension if present.
const size_t period_idx = filename.rfind('.');
if (std::string::npos != period_idx)
{
filename.erase(period_idx);
}

The Simplest way in C++17 is:
use the #include <filesystem> and filename() for filename with extension and stem() without extension.
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <filesystem>
namespace fs = std::filesystem;
int main()
{
std::string filename = "C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat";
std::cout << fs::path(filename).filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path(filename).stem() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/foo/bar.txt").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/foo/bar.txt").stem() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/foo/.bar").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/foo/bar/").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/foo/.").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/foo/..").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path(".").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path("..").filename() << '\n'
<< fs::path("/").filename() << '\n';
}
Which can be compiled with g++ -std=c++17 main.cpp -lstdc++fs, and outputs:
"MyFile.bat"
"MyFile"
"bar.txt"
"bar"
".bar"
""
"."
".."
"."
".."
"/"
Reference: cppreference

The simplest solution is to use something like boost::filesystem. If
for some reason this isn't an option...
Doing this correctly will require some system dependent code: under
Windows, either '\\' or '/' can be a path separator; under Unix,
only '/' works, and under other systems, who knows. The obvious
solution would be something like:
std::string
basename( std::string const& pathname )
{
return std::string(
std::find_if( pathname.rbegin(), pathname.rend(),
MatchPathSeparator() ).base(),
pathname.end() );
}
, with MatchPathSeparator being defined in a system dependent header
as either:
struct MatchPathSeparator
{
bool operator()( char ch ) const
{
return ch == '/';
}
};
for Unix, or:
struct MatchPathSeparator
{
bool operator()( char ch ) const
{
return ch == '\\' || ch == '/';
}
};
for Windows (or something still different for some other unknown
system).
EDIT: I missed the fact that he also wanted to suppress the extention.
For that, more of the same:
std::string
removeExtension( std::string const& filename )
{
std::string::const_reverse_iterator
pivot
= std::find( filename.rbegin(), filename.rend(), '.' );
return pivot == filename.rend()
? filename
: std::string( filename.begin(), pivot.base() - 1 );
}
The code is a little bit more complex, because in this case, the base of
the reverse iterator is on the wrong side of where we want to cut.
(Remember that the base of a reverse iterator is one behind the
character the iterator points to.) And even this is a little dubious: I
don't like the fact that it can return an empty string, for example.
(If the only '.' is the first character of the filename, I'd argue
that you should return the full filename. This would require a little
bit of extra code to catch the special case.)
}

_splitpath should do what you need. You could of course do it manually but _splitpath handles all special cases as well.
EDIT:
As BillHoag mentioned it is recommended to use the more safe version of _splitpath called _splitpath_s when available.
Or if you want something portable you could just do something like this
std::vector<std::string> splitpath(
const std::string& str
, const std::set<char> delimiters)
{
std::vector<std::string> result;
char const* pch = str.c_str();
char const* start = pch;
for(; *pch; ++pch)
{
if (delimiters.find(*pch) != delimiters.end())
{
if (start != pch)
{
std::string str(start, pch);
result.push_back(str);
}
else
{
result.push_back("");
}
start = pch + 1;
}
}
result.push_back(start);
return result;
}
...
std::set<char> delims{'\\'};
std::vector<std::string> path = splitpath("C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat", delims);
cout << path.back() << endl;

If you can use boost,
#include <boost/filesystem.hpp>
boost::filesystem::path p("C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat");
string basename = p.filename().string();
//or
//string basename = boost::filesystem::path("C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat").filename().string();
This is all.
I recommend you to use boost library. Boost gives you a lot of conveniences when you work with C++. It supports almost all platforms.
If you use Ubuntu, you can install boost library by only one line sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev (ref. How to install Boost on Ubuntu)

You can also use the shell Path APIs PathFindFileName, PathRemoveExtension. Probably worse than _splitpath for this particular problem, but those APIs are very useful for all kinds of path parsing jobs and they take UNC paths, forward slashes and other weird stuff into account.
wstring filename = L"C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat";
wchar_t* filepart = PathFindFileName(filename.c_str());
PathRemoveExtension(filepart);
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb773589(v=vs.85).aspx
The drawback is that you have to link to shlwapi.lib, but I'm not really sure why that's a drawback.

Function:
#include <string>
std::string
basename(const std::string &filename)
{
if (filename.empty()) {
return {};
}
auto len = filename.length();
auto index = filename.find_last_of("/\\");
if (index == std::string::npos) {
return filename;
}
if (index + 1 >= len) {
len--;
index = filename.substr(0, len).find_last_of("/\\");
if (len == 0) {
return filename;
}
if (index == 0) {
return filename.substr(1, len - 1);
}
if (index == std::string::npos) {
return filename.substr(0, len);
}
return filename.substr(index + 1, len - index - 1);
}
return filename.substr(index + 1, len - index);
}
Tests:
#define CATCH_CONFIG_MAIN
#include <catch/catch.hpp>
TEST_CASE("basename")
{
CHECK(basename("") == "");
CHECK(basename("no_path") == "no_path");
CHECK(basename("with.ext") == "with.ext");
CHECK(basename("/no_filename/") == "no_filename");
CHECK(basename("no_filename/") == "no_filename");
CHECK(basename("/no/filename/") == "filename");
CHECK(basename("/absolute/file.ext") == "file.ext");
CHECK(basename("../relative/file.ext") == "file.ext");
CHECK(basename("/") == "/");
CHECK(basename("c:\\windows\\path.ext") == "path.ext");
CHECK(basename("c:\\windows\\no_filename\\") == "no_filename");
}

From C++ Docs - string::find_last_of
#include <iostream> // std::cout
#include <string> // std::string
void SplitFilename (const std::string& str) {
std::cout << "Splitting: " << str << '\n';
unsigned found = str.find_last_of("/\\");
std::cout << " path: " << str.substr(0,found) << '\n';
std::cout << " file: " << str.substr(found+1) << '\n';
}
int main () {
std::string str1 ("/usr/bin/man");
std::string str2 ("c:\\windows\\winhelp.exe");
SplitFilename (str1);
SplitFilename (str2);
return 0;
}
Outputs:
Splitting: /usr/bin/man
path: /usr/bin
file: man
Splitting: c:\windows\winhelp.exe
path: c:\windows
file: winhelp.exe

C++11 variant (inspired by James Kanze's version) with uniform initialization and anonymous inline lambda.
std::string basename(const std::string& pathname)
{
return {std::find_if(pathname.rbegin(), pathname.rend(),
[](char c) { return c == '/'; }).base(),
pathname.end()};
}
It does not remove the file extension though.

The boost filesystem library is also available as the experimental/filesystem library and was merged into ISO C++ for C++17. You can use it like this:
#include <iostream>
#include <experimental/filesystem>
namespace fs = std::experimental::filesystem;
int main () {
std::cout << fs::path("/foo/bar.txt").filename() << '\n'
}
Output:
"bar.txt"
It also works for std::string objects.

this is the only thing that actually finally worked for me:
#include "Shlwapi.h"
CString some_string = "c:\\path\\hello.txt";
LPCSTR file_path = some_string.GetString();
LPCSTR filepart_c = PathFindFileName(file_path);
LPSTR filepart = LPSTR(filepart_c);
PathRemoveExtension(filepart);
pretty much what Skrymsli suggested but doesn't work with wchar_t*,
VS Enterprise 2015
_splitpath worked as well, but I don't like having to guess at how many char[?] characters I'm going to need; some people probably need this control, i guess.
CString c_model_name = "c:\\path\\hello.txt";
char drive[200];
char dir[200];
char name[200];
char ext[200];
_splitpath(c_model_name, drive, dir, name, ext);
I don't believe any includes were needed for _splitpath. No external libraries (like boost) were needed for either of these solutions.

std::string getfilename(std::string path)
{
path = path.substr(path.find_last_of("/\\") + 1);
size_t dot_i = path.find_last_of('.');
return path.substr(0, dot_i);
}

I would do it by...
Search backwards from the end of the string until you find the first backslash/forward slash.
Then search backwards again from the end of the string until you find the first dot (.)
You then have the start and end of the file name.
Simples...

You can use the std::filesystem to do it quite nicely:
#include <filesystem>
namespace fs = std::experimental::filesystem;
fs::path myFilePath("C:\\MyDirectory\\MyFile.bat");
fs::path filename = myFilePath.stem();

m_szFilePath.MakeLower();
CFileFind finder;
DWORD buffSize = MAX_PATH;
char longPath[MAX_PATH];
DWORD result = GetLongPathName(m_szFilePath, longPath, MAX_PATH );
if( result == 0)
{
m_bExists = FALSE;
return;
}
m_szFilePath = CString(longPath);
m_szFilePath.Replace("/","\\");
m_szFilePath.Trim();
//check if it does not ends in \ => remove it
int length = m_szFilePath.GetLength();
if( length > 0 && m_szFilePath[length - 1] == '\\' )
{
m_szFilePath.Truncate( length - 1 );
}
BOOL bWorking = finder.FindFile(this->m_szFilePath);
if(bWorking){
bWorking = finder.FindNextFile();
finder.GetCreationTime(this->m_CreationTime);
m_szFilePath = finder.GetFilePath();
m_szFileName = finder.GetFileName();
this->m_szFileExtension = this->GetExtension( m_szFileName );
m_szFileTitle = finder.GetFileTitle();
m_szFileURL = finder.GetFileURL();
finder.GetLastAccessTime(this->m_LastAccesTime);
finder.GetLastWriteTime(this->m_LastWriteTime);
m_ulFileSize = static_cast<unsigned long>(finder.GetLength());
m_szRootDirectory = finder.GetRoot();
m_bIsArchive = finder.IsArchived();
m_bIsCompressed = finder.IsCompressed();
m_bIsDirectory = finder.IsDirectory();
m_bIsHidden = finder.IsHidden();
m_bIsNormal = finder.IsNormal();
m_bIsReadOnly = finder.IsReadOnly();
m_bIsSystem = finder.IsSystem();
m_bIsTemporary = finder.IsTemporary();
m_bExists = TRUE;
finder.Close();
}else{
m_bExists = FALSE;
}
The variable m_szFileName contains the fileName.

Dont use _splitpath() and _wsplitpath(). They are not safe, and they are obsolete!
Instead, use their safe versions, namely _splitpath_s() and _wsplitpath_s()

This should work too :
// strPath = "C:\\Dir\\File.bat" for example
std::string getFileName(const std::string& strPath)
{
size_t iLastSeparator = 0;
return strPath.substr((iLastSeparator = strPath.find_last_of("\\")) != std::string::npos ? iLastSeparator + 1 : 0, strPath.size() - strPath.find_last_of("."));
}
If you can use it, Qt provide QString (with split, trim etc), QFile, QPath, QFileInfo etc to manipulate files, filenames and directories. And of course it's also cross plaftorm.

A really simple and short function that returns the filename+path that I made which uses no dependencies:
const char* GetFileNameFromPath(const char* _buffer)
{
char c;
int i;
for (i = 0; ;++i) {
c = *((char*)_buffer+i);
if (c == '\\' || c == '/')
return GetFileNameFromPath((char*)_buffer + i + 1);
if (c == '\0')
return _buffer;
}
return "";
}
To only get the filename without the extension you could change c == '\0' to c == '.'.

For long time I was looking for a function able to properly decompose file path. For me this code is working perfectly for both Linux and Windows.
void decomposePath(const char *filePath, char *fileDir, char *fileName, char *fileExt)
{
#if defined _WIN32
const char *lastSeparator = strrchr(filePath, '\\');
#else
const char *lastSeparator = strrchr(filePath, '/');
#endif
const char *lastDot = strrchr(filePath, '.');
const char *endOfPath = filePath + strlen(filePath);
const char *startOfName = lastSeparator ? lastSeparator + 1 : filePath;
const char *startOfExt = lastDot > startOfName ? lastDot : endOfPath;
if(fileDir)
_snprintf(fileDir, MAX_PATH, "%.*s", startOfName - filePath, filePath);
if(fileName)
_snprintf(fileName, MAX_PATH, "%.*s", startOfExt - startOfName, startOfName);
if(fileExt)
_snprintf(fileExt, MAX_PATH, "%s", startOfExt);
}
Example results are:
[]
fileDir: ''
fileName: ''
fileExt: ''
[.htaccess]
fileDir: ''
fileName: '.htaccess'
fileExt: ''
[a.exe]
fileDir: ''
fileName: 'a'
fileExt: '.exe'
[a\b.c]
fileDir: 'a\'
fileName: 'b'
fileExt: '.c'
[git-archive]
fileDir: ''
fileName: 'git-archive'
fileExt: ''
[git-archive.exe]
fileDir: ''
fileName: 'git-archive'
fileExt: '.exe'
[D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\.htaccess]
fileDir: 'D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\'
fileName: '.htaccess'
fileExt: ''
[D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\a.exe]
fileDir: 'D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\'
fileName: 'a'
fileExt: '.exe'
[D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\git-archive.exe]
fileDir: 'D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\'
fileName: 'git-archive'
fileExt: '.exe'
[D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git.core\git-archive.exe]
fileDir: 'D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git.core\'
fileName: 'git-archive'
fileExt: '.exe'
[D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\git-archiveexe]
fileDir: 'D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git-core\'
fileName: 'git-archiveexe'
fileExt: ''
[D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git.core\git-archiveexe]
fileDir: 'D:\Git\mingw64\libexec\git.core\'
fileName: 'git-archiveexe'
fileExt: ''
I hope this helps you also :)

shlwapi.lib/dll uses the HKCU registry hive internally.
It's best not to link to shlwapi.lib if you're creating a library or the product does not have a UI. If you're writing a lib then your code can be used in any project including those that don't have UIs.
If you're writing code that runs when a user is not logged in (e.g. service [or other] set to start at boot or startup) then there's no HKCU. Lastly, shlwapi are settlement functions; and as a result high on the list to deprecate in later versions of Windows.

A slow but straight forward regex solution:
std::string file = std::regex_replace(path, std::regex("(.*\\/)|(\\..*)"), "");

I implemented a function that might meet your needs.
It is based on string_view's constexpr function find_last_of (since c++17) which can be calculated at compile time
constexpr const char* base_filename(const char* p) {
const size_t i = std::string_view(p).find_last_of('/');
return std::string_view::npos == i ? p : p + i + 1 ;
}
//in the file you used this function
base_filename(__FILE__);

Here is the simplest version:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
int main()
{
std::string filepath = "directory/file-name.txt";
std::string filename = filepath.substr(filepath.find_last_of("/")+1, filepath.find_last_of(".") - filepath.find_last_of("/") - 1);
std::cout << filename << std::endl;
}
Returns:
file-name

Related

How to get parent folder from path in C++

I am using C++ in linux and I want to extract the parent folder from a path in C++ 14.
For example, I have the path likes
/home/abc/fi.mp4
My expected output be abc. How can I do it in C++
This is that I did
std::string getFolderName(const std::string &path) {
size_t found = path.find_last_of("/\\");
string foldername = ...
return foldername;
}
I believe the experimental version of std::filesystem was already available in C++14.
If it is indeed available in your environment, you can use parent_path() to get the parent folder from a path. Then you can use the method filename() to extract the name without the full path specification.
In order to convert a path to std::string you can use the string() method.
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <experimental/filesystem>
int main(int argc, char const* argv[])
{
std::string path_str = "/home/abc/fi.mp4";
std::experimental::filesystem::path p = path_str;
std::experimental::filesystem::path parent_p = p.parent_path();
std::experimental::filesystem::path parent_p_fname = p.parent_path().filename();
std::string result_str = parent_p_fname.string();
std::cout << result_str << std::endl;
return 0;
}
Output:
abc
You can further use parent_path() to climb up the hirarchy.
Once C++17 is available for you, you can simply drop the experimental prefix.
You probably want something like this:
// Returns the path-string without the filename part
std::string getFolderPath(const std::string &path) {
const size_t found = path.find_last_of("/\\");
return (found == string::npos) ? path : path.substr(0, found);
}
// Returns only the filename part (after the last slash)
std::string getFileName(const std::string & path) {
const size_t found = path.find_last_of("/\\");
return (found == string::npos) ? path : path.substr(found+1);
}
The function getFolders will get you all the folder names in a path.
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
vector<string> getFolders(const char* path) {
vector<string> folders;
stringstream ss;
int i = 0, k = 0;
char c;
while ((c = *(path + i)) != '\0') {
if (c != '/'){
ss << c;
++k;
}
else {
if (k > 0){
folders.push_back(ss.str());
ss.str(string());
k = 0;
}
}
++i;
}
return folders;
}
void main()
{
vector<string> folders = getFolders("/home/abc/fi.mp4");
for (auto f : folders){
cout << f << endl;
}
}

How can you split string in C++ and store them in variables? [duplicate]

Java has a convenient split method:
String str = "The quick brown fox";
String[] results = str.split(" ");
Is there an easy way to do this in C++?
The Boost tokenizer class can make this sort of thing quite simple:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/foreach.hpp>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
int main(int, char**)
{
string text = "token, test string";
char_separator<char> sep(", ");
tokenizer< char_separator<char> > tokens(text, sep);
BOOST_FOREACH (const string& t, tokens) {
cout << t << "." << endl;
}
}
Updated for C++11:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
int main(int, char**)
{
string text = "token, test string";
char_separator<char> sep(", ");
tokenizer<char_separator<char>> tokens(text, sep);
for (const auto& t : tokens) {
cout << t << "." << endl;
}
}
Here's a real simple one:
#include <vector>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
vector<string> split(const char *str, char c = ' ')
{
vector<string> result;
do
{
const char *begin = str;
while(*str != c && *str)
str++;
result.push_back(string(begin, str));
} while (0 != *str++);
return result;
}
C++ standard library algorithms are pretty universally based around iterators rather than concrete containers. Unfortunately this makes it hard to provide a Java-like split function in the C++ standard library, even though nobody argues that this would be convenient. But what would its return type be? std::vector<std::basic_string<…>>? Maybe, but then we’re forced to perform (potentially redundant and costly) allocations.
Instead, C++ offers a plethora of ways to split strings based on arbitrarily complex delimiters, but none of them is encapsulated as nicely as in other languages. The numerous ways fill whole blog posts.
At its simplest, you could iterate using std::string::find until you hit std::string::npos, and extract the contents using std::string::substr.
A more fluid (and idiomatic, but basic) version for splitting on whitespace would use a std::istringstream:
auto iss = std::istringstream{"The quick brown fox"};
auto str = std::string{};
while (iss >> str) {
process(str);
}
Using std::istream_iterators, the contents of the string stream could also be copied into a vector using its iterator range constructor.
Multiple libraries (such as Boost.Tokenizer) offer specific tokenisers.
More advanced splitting require regular expressions. C++ provides the std::regex_token_iterator for this purpose in particular:
auto const str = "The quick brown fox"s;
auto const re = std::regex{R"(\s+)"};
auto const vec = std::vector<std::string>(
std::sregex_token_iterator{begin(str), end(str), re, -1},
std::sregex_token_iterator{}
);
Another quick way is to use getline. Something like:
stringstream ss("bla bla");
string s;
while (getline(ss, s, ' ')) {
cout << s << endl;
}
If you want, you can make a simple split() method returning a vector<string>, which is
really useful.
Use strtok. In my opinion, there isn't a need to build a class around tokenizing unless strtok doesn't provide you with what you need. It might not, but in 15+ years of writing various parsing code in C and C++, I've always used strtok. Here is an example
char myString[] = "The quick brown fox";
char *p = strtok(myString, " ");
while (p) {
printf ("Token: %s\n", p);
p = strtok(NULL, " ");
}
A few caveats (which might not suit your needs). The string is "destroyed" in the process, meaning that EOS characters are placed inline in the delimter spots. Correct usage might require you to make a non-const version of the string. You can also change the list of delimiters mid parse.
In my own opinion, the above code is far simpler and easier to use than writing a separate class for it. To me, this is one of those functions that the language provides and it does it well and cleanly. It's simply a "C based" solution. It's appropriate, it's easy, and you don't have to write a lot of extra code :-)
You can use streams, iterators, and the copy algorithm to do this fairly directly.
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <istream>
#include <ostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <sstream>
#include <algorithm>
int main()
{
std::string str = "The quick brown fox";
// construct a stream from the string
std::stringstream strstr(str);
// use stream iterators to copy the stream to the vector as whitespace separated strings
std::istream_iterator<std::string> it(strstr);
std::istream_iterator<std::string> end;
std::vector<std::string> results(it, end);
// send the vector to stdout.
std::ostream_iterator<std::string> oit(std::cout);
std::copy(results.begin(), results.end(), oit);
}
A solution using regex_token_iterators:
#include <iostream>
#include <regex>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string str("The quick brown fox");
regex reg("\\s+");
sregex_token_iterator iter(str.begin(), str.end(), reg, -1);
sregex_token_iterator end;
vector<string> vec(iter, end);
for (auto a : vec)
{
cout << a << endl;
}
}
No offense folks, but for such a simple problem, you are making things way too complicated. There are a lot of reasons to use Boost. But for something this simple, it's like hitting a fly with a 20# sledge.
void
split( vector<string> & theStringVector, /* Altered/returned value */
const string & theString,
const string & theDelimiter)
{
UASSERT( theDelimiter.size(), >, 0); // My own ASSERT macro.
size_t start = 0, end = 0;
while ( end != string::npos)
{
end = theString.find( theDelimiter, start);
// If at end, use length=maxLength. Else use length=end-start.
theStringVector.push_back( theString.substr( start,
(end == string::npos) ? string::npos : end - start));
// If at end, use start=maxSize. Else use start=end+delimiter.
start = ( ( end > (string::npos - theDelimiter.size()) )
? string::npos : end + theDelimiter.size());
}
}
For example (for Doug's case),
#define SHOW(I,X) cout << "[" << (I) << "]\t " # X " = \"" << (X) << "\"" << endl
int
main()
{
vector<string> v;
split( v, "A:PEP:909:Inventory Item", ":" );
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < v.size(); i++)
SHOW( i, v[i] );
}
And yes, we could have split() return a new vector rather than passing one in. It's trivial to wrap and overload. But depending on what I'm doing, I often find it better to re-use pre-existing objects rather than always creating new ones. (Just as long as I don't forget to empty the vector in between!)
Reference: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/.
(I was originally writing a response to Doug's question: C++ Strings Modifying and Extracting based on Separators (closed). But since Martin York closed that question with a pointer over here... I'll just generalize my code.)
Boost has a strong split function: boost::algorithm::split.
Sample program:
#include <vector>
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>
int main() {
auto s = "a,b, c ,,e,f,";
std::vector<std::string> fields;
boost::split(fields, s, boost::is_any_of(","));
for (const auto& field : fields)
std::cout << "\"" << field << "\"\n";
return 0;
}
Output:
"a"
"b"
" c "
""
"e"
"f"
""
This is a simple STL-only solution (~5 lines!) using std::find and std::find_first_not_of that handles repetitions of the delimiter (like spaces or periods for instance), as well leading and trailing delimiters:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
void tokenize(std::string str, std::vector<string> &token_v){
size_t start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER), end=start;
while (start != std::string::npos){
// Find next occurence of delimiter
end = str.find(DELIMITER, start);
// Push back the token found into vector
token_v.push_back(str.substr(start, end-start));
// Skip all occurences of the delimiter to find new start
start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER, end);
}
}
Try it out live!
I know you asked for a C++ solution, but you might consider this helpful:
Qt
#include <QString>
...
QString str = "The quick brown fox";
QStringList results = str.split(" ");
The advantage over Boost in this example is that it's a direct one to one mapping to your post's code.
See more at Qt documentation
Here is a sample tokenizer class that might do what you want
//Header file
class Tokenizer
{
public:
static const std::string DELIMITERS;
Tokenizer(const std::string& str);
Tokenizer(const std::string& str, const std::string& delimiters);
bool NextToken();
bool NextToken(const std::string& delimiters);
const std::string GetToken() const;
void Reset();
protected:
size_t m_offset;
const std::string m_string;
std::string m_token;
std::string m_delimiters;
};
//CPP file
const std::string Tokenizer::DELIMITERS(" \t\n\r");
Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s) :
m_string(s),
m_offset(0),
m_delimiters(DELIMITERS) {}
Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s, const std::string& delimiters) :
m_string(s),
m_offset(0),
m_delimiters(delimiters) {}
bool Tokenizer::NextToken()
{
return NextToken(m_delimiters);
}
bool Tokenizer::NextToken(const std::string& delimiters)
{
size_t i = m_string.find_first_not_of(delimiters, m_offset);
if (std::string::npos == i)
{
m_offset = m_string.length();
return false;
}
size_t j = m_string.find_first_of(delimiters, i);
if (std::string::npos == j)
{
m_token = m_string.substr(i);
m_offset = m_string.length();
return true;
}
m_token = m_string.substr(i, j - i);
m_offset = j;
return true;
}
Example:
std::vector <std::string> v;
Tokenizer s("split this string", " ");
while (s.NextToken())
{
v.push_back(s.GetToken());
}
pystring is a small library which implements a bunch of Python's string functions, including the split method:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include "pystring.h"
std::vector<std::string> chunks;
pystring::split("this string", chunks);
// also can specify a separator
pystring::split("this-string", chunks, "-");
I posted this answer for similar question.
Don't reinvent the wheel. I've used a number of libraries and the fastest and most flexible I have come across is: C++ String Toolkit Library.
Here is an example of how to use it that I've posted else where on the stackoverflow.
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <strtk.hpp>
const char *whitespace = " \t\r\n\f";
const char *whitespace_and_punctuation = " \t\r\n\f;,=";
int main()
{
{ // normal parsing of a string into a vector of strings
std::string s("Somewhere down the road");
std::vector<std::string> result;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace, result ) )
{
for(size_t i = 0; i < result.size(); ++i )
std::cout << result[i] << std::endl;
}
}
{ // parsing a string into a vector of floats with other separators
// besides spaces
std::string s("3.0, 3.14; 4.0");
std::vector<float> values;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, values ) )
{
for(size_t i = 0; i < values.size(); ++i )
std::cout << values[i] << std::endl;
}
}
{ // parsing a string into specific variables
std::string s("angle = 45; radius = 9.9");
std::string w1, w2;
float v1, v2;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, w1, v1, w2, v2) )
{
std::cout << "word " << w1 << ", value " << v1 << std::endl;
std::cout << "word " << w2 << ", value " << v2 << std::endl;
}
}
return 0;
}
Adam Pierce's answer provides an hand-spun tokenizer taking in a const char*. It's a bit more problematic to do with iterators because incrementing a string's end iterator is undefined. That said, given string str{ "The quick brown fox" } we can certainly accomplish this:
auto start = find(cbegin(str), cend(str), ' ');
vector<string> tokens{ string(cbegin(str), start) };
while (start != cend(str)) {
const auto finish = find(++start, cend(str), ' ');
tokens.push_back(string(start, finish));
start = finish;
}
Live Example
If you're looking to abstract complexity by using standard functionality, as On Freund suggests strtok is a simple option:
vector<string> tokens;
for (auto i = strtok(data(str), " "); i != nullptr; i = strtok(nullptr, " ")) tokens.push_back(i);
If you don't have access to C++17 you'll need to substitute data(str) as in this example: http://ideone.com/8kAGoa
Though not demonstrated in the example, strtok need not use the same delimiter for each token. Along with this advantage though, there are several drawbacks:
strtok cannot be used on multiple strings at the same time: Either a nullptr must be passed to continue tokenizing the current string or a new char* to tokenize must be passed (there are some non-standard implementations which do support this however, such as: strtok_s)
For the same reason strtok cannot be used on multiple threads simultaneously (this may however be implementation defined, for example: Visual Studio's implementation is thread safe)
Calling strtok modifies the string it is operating on, so it cannot be used on const strings, const char*s, or literal strings, to tokenize any of these with strtok or to operate on a string who's contents need to be preserved, str would have to be copied, then the copy could be operated on
c++20 provides us with split_view to tokenize strings, in a non-destructive manner: https://topanswers.xyz/cplusplus?q=749#a874
The previous methods cannot generate a tokenized vector in-place, meaning without abstracting them into a helper function they cannot initialize const vector<string> tokens. That functionality and the ability to accept any white-space delimiter can be harnessed using an istream_iterator. For example given: const string str{ "The quick \tbrown \nfox" } we can do this:
istringstream is{ str };
const vector<string> tokens{ istream_iterator<string>(is), istream_iterator<string>() };
Live Example
The required construction of an istringstream for this option has far greater cost than the previous 2 options, however this cost is typically hidden in the expense of string allocation.
If none of the above options are flexable enough for your tokenization needs, the most flexible option is using a regex_token_iterator of course with this flexibility comes greater expense, but again this is likely hidden in the string allocation cost. Say for example we want to tokenize based on non-escaped commas, also eating white-space, given the following input: const string str{ "The ,qu\\,ick ,\tbrown, fox" } we can do this:
const regex re{ "\\s*((?:[^\\\\,]|\\\\.)*?)\\s*(?:,|$)" };
const vector<string> tokens{ sregex_token_iterator(cbegin(str), cend(str), re, 1), sregex_token_iterator() };
Live Example
Check this example. It might help you..
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
int main ()
{
string tmps;
istringstream is ("the dellimiter is the space");
while (is.good ()) {
is >> tmps;
cout << tmps << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
If you're using C++ ranges - the full ranges-v3 library, not the limited functionality accepted into C++20 - you could do it this way:
auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1);
... and this is lazily-evaluated. You can alternatively set a vector to this range:
auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1) | ranges::to<std::vector>();
this will take O(m) space and O(n) time if str has n characters making up m words.
See also the library's own tokenization example, here.
MFC/ATL has a very nice tokenizer. From MSDN:
CAtlString str( "%First Second#Third" );
CAtlString resToken;
int curPos= 0;
resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
while (resToken != "")
{
printf("Resulting token: %s\n", resToken);
resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
};
Output
Resulting Token: First
Resulting Token: Second
Resulting Token: Third
If you're willing to use C, you can use the strtok function. You should pay attention to multi-threading issues when using it.
For simple stuff I just use the following:
unsigned TokenizeString(const std::string& i_source,
const std::string& i_seperators,
bool i_discard_empty_tokens,
std::vector<std::string>& o_tokens)
{
unsigned prev_pos = 0;
unsigned pos = 0;
unsigned number_of_tokens = 0;
o_tokens.clear();
pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
while (pos != std::string::npos)
{
std::string token = i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos);
if (!i_discard_empty_tokens || token != "")
{
o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos));
number_of_tokens++;
}
pos++;
prev_pos = pos;
pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
}
if (prev_pos < i_source.length())
{
o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos));
number_of_tokens++;
}
return number_of_tokens;
}
Cowardly disclaimer: I write real-time data processing software where the data comes in through binary files, sockets, or some API call (I/O cards, camera's). I never use this function for something more complicated or time-critical than reading external configuration files on startup.
You can simply use a regular expression library and solve that using regular expressions.
Use expression (\w+) and the variable in \1 (or $1 depending on the library implementation of regular expressions).
Many overly complicated suggestions here. Try this simple std::string solution:
using namespace std;
string someText = ...
string::size_type tokenOff = 0, sepOff = tokenOff;
while (sepOff != string::npos)
{
sepOff = someText.find(' ', sepOff);
string::size_type tokenLen = (sepOff == string::npos) ? sepOff : sepOff++ - tokenOff;
string token = someText.substr(tokenOff, tokenLen);
if (!token.empty())
/* do something with token */;
tokenOff = sepOff;
}
I thought that was what the >> operator on string streams was for:
string word; sin >> word;
Here's an approach that allows you control over whether empty tokens are included (like strsep) or excluded (like strtok).
#include <string.h> // for strchr and strlen
/*
* want_empty_tokens==true : include empty tokens, like strsep()
* want_empty_tokens==false : exclude empty tokens, like strtok()
*/
std::vector<std::string> tokenize(const char* src,
char delim,
bool want_empty_tokens)
{
std::vector<std::string> tokens;
if (src and *src != '\0') // defensive
while( true ) {
const char* d = strchr(src, delim);
size_t len = (d)? d-src : strlen(src);
if (len or want_empty_tokens)
tokens.push_back( std::string(src, len) ); // capture token
if (d) src += len+1; else break;
}
return tokens;
}
Seems odd to me that with all us speed conscious nerds here on SO no one has presented a version that uses a compile time generated look up table for the delimiter (example implementation further down). Using a look up table and iterators should beat std::regex in efficiency, if you don't need to beat regex, just use it, its standard as of C++11 and super flexible.
Some have suggested regex already but for the noobs here is a packaged example that should do exactly what the OP expects:
std::vector<std::string> split(std::string::const_iterator it, std::string::const_iterator end, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){
std::smatch m{};
std::vector<std::string> ret{};
while (std::regex_search (it,end,m,e)) {
ret.emplace_back(m.str());
std::advance(it, m.position() + m.length()); //next start position = match position + match length
}
return ret;
}
std::vector<std::string> split(const std::string &s, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){ //comfort version calls flexible version
return split(s.cbegin(), s.cend(), std::move(e));
}
int main ()
{
std::string str {"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
auto v = split(str);
for(const auto&s:v){
std::cout << s << std::endl;
}
std::cout << "crazy version:" << std::endl;
v = split(str, std::regex{"[^e]+"}); //using e as delim shows flexibility
for(const auto&s:v){
std::cout << s << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}
If we need to be faster and accept the constraint that all chars must be 8 bits we can make a look up table at compile time using metaprogramming:
template<bool...> struct BoolSequence{}; //just here to hold bools
template<char...> struct CharSequence{}; //just here to hold chars
template<typename T, char C> struct Contains; //generic
template<char First, char... Cs, char Match> //not first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,Match> :
Contains<CharSequence<Cs...>, Match>{}; //strip first and increase index
template<char First, char... Cs> //is first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,First>: std::true_type {};
template<char Match> //not found specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<>,Match>: std::false_type{};
template<int I, typename T, typename U>
struct MakeSequence; //generic
template<int I, bool... Bs, typename U>
struct MakeSequence<I,BoolSequence<Bs...>, U>: //not last
MakeSequence<I-1, BoolSequence<Contains<U,I-1>::value,Bs...>, U>{};
template<bool... Bs, typename U>
struct MakeSequence<0,BoolSequence<Bs...>,U>{ //last
using Type = BoolSequence<Bs...>;
};
template<typename T> struct BoolASCIITable;
template<bool... Bs> struct BoolASCIITable<BoolSequence<Bs...>>{
/* could be made constexpr but not yet supported by MSVC */
static bool isDelim(const char c){
static const bool table[256] = {Bs...};
return table[static_cast<int>(c)];
}
};
using Delims = CharSequence<'.',',',' ',':','\n'>; //list your custom delimiters here
using Table = BoolASCIITable<typename MakeSequence<256,BoolSequence<>,Delims>::Type>;
With that in place making a getNextToken function is easy:
template<typename T_It>
std::pair<T_It,T_It> getNextToken(T_It begin,T_It end){
begin = std::find_if(begin,end,std::not1(Table{})); //find first non delim or end
auto second = std::find_if(begin,end,Table{}); //find first delim or end
return std::make_pair(begin,second);
}
Using it is also easy:
int main() {
std::string s{"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
auto it = std::begin(s);
auto end = std::end(s);
while(it != std::end(s)){
auto token = getNextToken(it,end);
std::cout << std::string(token.first,token.second) << std::endl;
it = token.second;
}
return 0;
}
Here is a live example: http://ideone.com/GKtkLQ
I know this question is already answered but I want to contribute. Maybe my solution is a bit simple but this is what I came up with:
vector<string> get_words(string const& text, string const& separator)
{
vector<string> result;
string tmp = text;
size_t first_pos = 0;
size_t second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
while (second_pos != string::npos)
{
if (first_pos != second_pos)
{
string word = tmp.substr(first_pos, second_pos - first_pos);
result.push_back(word);
}
tmp = tmp.substr(second_pos + separator.length());
second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
}
result.push_back(tmp);
return result;
}
Please comment if there is a better approach to something in my code or if something is wrong.
UPDATE: added generic separator
you can take advantage of boost::make_find_iterator. Something similar to this:
template<typename CH>
inline vector< basic_string<CH> > tokenize(
const basic_string<CH> &Input,
const basic_string<CH> &Delimiter,
bool remove_empty_token
) {
typedef typename basic_string<CH>::const_iterator string_iterator_t;
typedef boost::find_iterator< string_iterator_t > string_find_iterator_t;
vector< basic_string<CH> > Result;
string_iterator_t it = Input.begin();
string_iterator_t it_end = Input.end();
for(string_find_iterator_t i = boost::make_find_iterator(Input, boost::first_finder(Delimiter, boost::is_equal()));
i != string_find_iterator_t();
++i) {
if(remove_empty_token){
if(it != i->begin())
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
}
else
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
it = i->end();
}
if(it != it_end)
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,it_end));
return Result;
}
Here's my Swiss® Army Knife of string-tokenizers for splitting up strings by whitespace, accounting for single and double-quote wrapped strings as well as stripping those characters from the results. I used RegexBuddy 4.x to generate most of the code-snippet, but I added custom handling for stripping quotes and a few other things.
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#include <regex>
std::vector<std::wstring> tokenize_string(std::wstring string_to_tokenize) {
std::vector<std::wstring> tokens;
std::wregex re(LR"(("[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^"' ]+))", std::regex_constants::collate);
std::wsregex_iterator next( string_to_tokenize.begin(),
string_to_tokenize.end(),
re,
std::regex_constants::match_not_null );
std::wsregex_iterator end;
const wchar_t single_quote = L'\'';
const wchar_t double_quote = L'\"';
while ( next != end ) {
std::wsmatch match = *next;
const std::wstring token = match.str( 0 );
next++;
if (token.length() > 2 && (token.front() == double_quote || token.front() == single_quote))
tokens.emplace_back( std::wstring(token.begin()+1, token.begin()+token.length()-1) );
else
tokens.emplace_back(token);
}
return tokens;
}
I wrote a simplified version (and maybe a little bit efficient) of https://stackoverflow.com/a/50247503/3976739 for my own use. I hope it would help.
void StrTokenizer(string& source, const char* delimiter, vector<string>& Tokens)
{
size_t new_index = 0;
size_t old_index = 0;
while (new_index != std::string::npos)
{
new_index = source.find(delimiter, old_index);
Tokens.emplace_back(source.substr(old_index, new_index-old_index));
if (new_index != std::string::npos)
old_index = ++new_index;
}
}
If the maximum length of the input string to be tokenized is known, one can exploit this and implement a very fast version. I am sketching the basic idea below, which was inspired by both strtok() and the "suffix array"-data structure described Jon Bentley's "Programming Perls" 2nd edition, chapter 15. The C++ class in this case only gives some organization and convenience of use. The implementation shown can be easily extended for removing leading and trailing whitespace characters in the tokens.
Basically one can replace the separator characters with string-terminating '\0'-characters and set pointers to the tokens withing the modified string. In the extreme case when the string consists only of separators, one gets string-length plus 1 resulting empty tokens. It is practical to duplicate the string to be modified.
Header file:
class TextLineSplitter
{
public:
TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len );
~TextLineSplitter();
void SplitLine( const char *line,
const char sep_char = ',',
);
inline size_t NumTokens( void ) const
{
return mNumTokens;
}
const char * GetToken( const size_t token_idx ) const
{
assert( token_idx < mNumTokens );
return mTokens[ token_idx ];
}
private:
const size_t mStorageSize;
char *mBuff;
char **mTokens;
size_t mNumTokens;
inline void ResetContent( void )
{
memset( mBuff, 0, mStorageSize );
// mark all items as empty:
memset( mTokens, 0, mStorageSize * sizeof( char* ) );
// reset counter for found items:
mNumTokens = 0L;
}
};
Implementattion file:
TextLineSplitter::TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len ):
mStorageSize ( max_line_len + 1L )
{
// allocate memory
mBuff = new char [ mStorageSize ];
mTokens = new char* [ mStorageSize ];
ResetContent();
}
TextLineSplitter::~TextLineSplitter()
{
delete [] mBuff;
delete [] mTokens;
}
void TextLineSplitter::SplitLine( const char *line,
const char sep_char /* = ',' */,
)
{
assert( sep_char != '\0' );
ResetContent();
strncpy( mBuff, line, mMaxLineLen );
size_t idx = 0L; // running index for characters
do
{
assert( idx < mStorageSize );
const char chr = line[ idx ]; // retrieve current character
if( mTokens[ mNumTokens ] == NULL )
{
mTokens[ mNumTokens ] = &mBuff[ idx ];
} // if
if( chr == sep_char || chr == '\0' )
{ // item or line finished
// overwrite separator with a 0-terminating character:
mBuff[ idx ] = '\0';
// count-up items:
mNumTokens ++;
} // if
} while( line[ idx++ ] );
}
A scenario of usage would be:
// create an instance capable of splitting strings up to 1000 chars long:
TextLineSplitter spl( 1000 );
spl.SplitLine( "Item1,,Item2,Item3" );
for( size_t i = 0; i < spl.NumTokens(); i++ )
{
printf( "%s\n", spl.GetToken( i ) );
}
output:
Item1
Item2
Item3

How to use part of a filename as a variable in C++

I have a few thousand pcap files that I'm trying to parse as part of a research project. They are all named as xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx_yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy.pcap where the first IP address is the one I'm trying to use as a variable in my C++ program.
Parsing the pcap files themselves is not an issue. I am passing the filename to the function as a pointer and just don't quite know how to grab that first part of the filename.
As requested, here is a bit of code:
//program.cpp//
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
char * inFile;
inFile = argv[1];
result = parsePkts(inFile);
return 0;
}
//functions.h//
int parsePkts(char *fn){
struct ip *ipHdr = NULL;
ipHdr = (struct ip *)(data + sizeof(struct ether_header));
if((ipHdr -> ip_dst.s_addr)) == xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) {
do stuff
}
}
Obviously there is a lot more to the program but this is where I need to grab it. Thanks.
if your input is const char* as filename you can split it in severals ways. You wrote that you need to split it into some parts (first part). I have little snippet to split string by char in your case '_'
void stringSplitBy(std::string str, const char *separator, std::vector<std::string> &results)
{
size_t found = str.find_first_of(separator);
while (found != std::string::npos) {
if (found > 0) {
results.push_back(str.substr(0, found));
}
str = str.substr(found + 1);
found = str.find_first_of(separator);
}
if (str.length() > 0) {
results.push_back(str);
}
}
Use it in this way:
const char* inputfname = "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx_yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy.pcap";
std::string fname = std::string(inputfname);
std::vector<std::string> results;
stringSplitBy(fname, '_', results);
You can print result:
std::vector<std::string>::iterator it = results.begin();
for (; it != results.end(); ++it)
{
std::cout<< (*it).c_str() << std::endl;
}

How to parse a string in c++ [duplicate]

Java has a convenient split method:
String str = "The quick brown fox";
String[] results = str.split(" ");
Is there an easy way to do this in C++?
The Boost tokenizer class can make this sort of thing quite simple:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/foreach.hpp>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
int main(int, char**)
{
string text = "token, test string";
char_separator<char> sep(", ");
tokenizer< char_separator<char> > tokens(text, sep);
BOOST_FOREACH (const string& t, tokens) {
cout << t << "." << endl;
}
}
Updated for C++11:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
int main(int, char**)
{
string text = "token, test string";
char_separator<char> sep(", ");
tokenizer<char_separator<char>> tokens(text, sep);
for (const auto& t : tokens) {
cout << t << "." << endl;
}
}
Here's a real simple one:
#include <vector>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
vector<string> split(const char *str, char c = ' ')
{
vector<string> result;
do
{
const char *begin = str;
while(*str != c && *str)
str++;
result.push_back(string(begin, str));
} while (0 != *str++);
return result;
}
C++ standard library algorithms are pretty universally based around iterators rather than concrete containers. Unfortunately this makes it hard to provide a Java-like split function in the C++ standard library, even though nobody argues that this would be convenient. But what would its return type be? std::vector<std::basic_string<…>>? Maybe, but then we’re forced to perform (potentially redundant and costly) allocations.
Instead, C++ offers a plethora of ways to split strings based on arbitrarily complex delimiters, but none of them is encapsulated as nicely as in other languages. The numerous ways fill whole blog posts.
At its simplest, you could iterate using std::string::find until you hit std::string::npos, and extract the contents using std::string::substr.
A more fluid (and idiomatic, but basic) version for splitting on whitespace would use a std::istringstream:
auto iss = std::istringstream{"The quick brown fox"};
auto str = std::string{};
while (iss >> str) {
process(str);
}
Using std::istream_iterators, the contents of the string stream could also be copied into a vector using its iterator range constructor.
Multiple libraries (such as Boost.Tokenizer) offer specific tokenisers.
More advanced splitting require regular expressions. C++ provides the std::regex_token_iterator for this purpose in particular:
auto const str = "The quick brown fox"s;
auto const re = std::regex{R"(\s+)"};
auto const vec = std::vector<std::string>(
std::sregex_token_iterator{begin(str), end(str), re, -1},
std::sregex_token_iterator{}
);
Another quick way is to use getline. Something like:
stringstream ss("bla bla");
string s;
while (getline(ss, s, ' ')) {
cout << s << endl;
}
If you want, you can make a simple split() method returning a vector<string>, which is
really useful.
Use strtok. In my opinion, there isn't a need to build a class around tokenizing unless strtok doesn't provide you with what you need. It might not, but in 15+ years of writing various parsing code in C and C++, I've always used strtok. Here is an example
char myString[] = "The quick brown fox";
char *p = strtok(myString, " ");
while (p) {
printf ("Token: %s\n", p);
p = strtok(NULL, " ");
}
A few caveats (which might not suit your needs). The string is "destroyed" in the process, meaning that EOS characters are placed inline in the delimter spots. Correct usage might require you to make a non-const version of the string. You can also change the list of delimiters mid parse.
In my own opinion, the above code is far simpler and easier to use than writing a separate class for it. To me, this is one of those functions that the language provides and it does it well and cleanly. It's simply a "C based" solution. It's appropriate, it's easy, and you don't have to write a lot of extra code :-)
You can use streams, iterators, and the copy algorithm to do this fairly directly.
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <istream>
#include <ostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <sstream>
#include <algorithm>
int main()
{
std::string str = "The quick brown fox";
// construct a stream from the string
std::stringstream strstr(str);
// use stream iterators to copy the stream to the vector as whitespace separated strings
std::istream_iterator<std::string> it(strstr);
std::istream_iterator<std::string> end;
std::vector<std::string> results(it, end);
// send the vector to stdout.
std::ostream_iterator<std::string> oit(std::cout);
std::copy(results.begin(), results.end(), oit);
}
A solution using regex_token_iterators:
#include <iostream>
#include <regex>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string str("The quick brown fox");
regex reg("\\s+");
sregex_token_iterator iter(str.begin(), str.end(), reg, -1);
sregex_token_iterator end;
vector<string> vec(iter, end);
for (auto a : vec)
{
cout << a << endl;
}
}
No offense folks, but for such a simple problem, you are making things way too complicated. There are a lot of reasons to use Boost. But for something this simple, it's like hitting a fly with a 20# sledge.
void
split( vector<string> & theStringVector, /* Altered/returned value */
const string & theString,
const string & theDelimiter)
{
UASSERT( theDelimiter.size(), >, 0); // My own ASSERT macro.
size_t start = 0, end = 0;
while ( end != string::npos)
{
end = theString.find( theDelimiter, start);
// If at end, use length=maxLength. Else use length=end-start.
theStringVector.push_back( theString.substr( start,
(end == string::npos) ? string::npos : end - start));
// If at end, use start=maxSize. Else use start=end+delimiter.
start = ( ( end > (string::npos - theDelimiter.size()) )
? string::npos : end + theDelimiter.size());
}
}
For example (for Doug's case),
#define SHOW(I,X) cout << "[" << (I) << "]\t " # X " = \"" << (X) << "\"" << endl
int
main()
{
vector<string> v;
split( v, "A:PEP:909:Inventory Item", ":" );
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < v.size(); i++)
SHOW( i, v[i] );
}
And yes, we could have split() return a new vector rather than passing one in. It's trivial to wrap and overload. But depending on what I'm doing, I often find it better to re-use pre-existing objects rather than always creating new ones. (Just as long as I don't forget to empty the vector in between!)
Reference: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/.
(I was originally writing a response to Doug's question: C++ Strings Modifying and Extracting based on Separators (closed). But since Martin York closed that question with a pointer over here... I'll just generalize my code.)
Boost has a strong split function: boost::algorithm::split.
Sample program:
#include <vector>
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>
int main() {
auto s = "a,b, c ,,e,f,";
std::vector<std::string> fields;
boost::split(fields, s, boost::is_any_of(","));
for (const auto& field : fields)
std::cout << "\"" << field << "\"\n";
return 0;
}
Output:
"a"
"b"
" c "
""
"e"
"f"
""
This is a simple STL-only solution (~5 lines!) using std::find and std::find_first_not_of that handles repetitions of the delimiter (like spaces or periods for instance), as well leading and trailing delimiters:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
void tokenize(std::string str, std::vector<string> &token_v){
size_t start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER), end=start;
while (start != std::string::npos){
// Find next occurence of delimiter
end = str.find(DELIMITER, start);
// Push back the token found into vector
token_v.push_back(str.substr(start, end-start));
// Skip all occurences of the delimiter to find new start
start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER, end);
}
}
Try it out live!
I know you asked for a C++ solution, but you might consider this helpful:
Qt
#include <QString>
...
QString str = "The quick brown fox";
QStringList results = str.split(" ");
The advantage over Boost in this example is that it's a direct one to one mapping to your post's code.
See more at Qt documentation
Here is a sample tokenizer class that might do what you want
//Header file
class Tokenizer
{
public:
static const std::string DELIMITERS;
Tokenizer(const std::string& str);
Tokenizer(const std::string& str, const std::string& delimiters);
bool NextToken();
bool NextToken(const std::string& delimiters);
const std::string GetToken() const;
void Reset();
protected:
size_t m_offset;
const std::string m_string;
std::string m_token;
std::string m_delimiters;
};
//CPP file
const std::string Tokenizer::DELIMITERS(" \t\n\r");
Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s) :
m_string(s),
m_offset(0),
m_delimiters(DELIMITERS) {}
Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s, const std::string& delimiters) :
m_string(s),
m_offset(0),
m_delimiters(delimiters) {}
bool Tokenizer::NextToken()
{
return NextToken(m_delimiters);
}
bool Tokenizer::NextToken(const std::string& delimiters)
{
size_t i = m_string.find_first_not_of(delimiters, m_offset);
if (std::string::npos == i)
{
m_offset = m_string.length();
return false;
}
size_t j = m_string.find_first_of(delimiters, i);
if (std::string::npos == j)
{
m_token = m_string.substr(i);
m_offset = m_string.length();
return true;
}
m_token = m_string.substr(i, j - i);
m_offset = j;
return true;
}
Example:
std::vector <std::string> v;
Tokenizer s("split this string", " ");
while (s.NextToken())
{
v.push_back(s.GetToken());
}
pystring is a small library which implements a bunch of Python's string functions, including the split method:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include "pystring.h"
std::vector<std::string> chunks;
pystring::split("this string", chunks);
// also can specify a separator
pystring::split("this-string", chunks, "-");
I posted this answer for similar question.
Don't reinvent the wheel. I've used a number of libraries and the fastest and most flexible I have come across is: C++ String Toolkit Library.
Here is an example of how to use it that I've posted else where on the stackoverflow.
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <strtk.hpp>
const char *whitespace = " \t\r\n\f";
const char *whitespace_and_punctuation = " \t\r\n\f;,=";
int main()
{
{ // normal parsing of a string into a vector of strings
std::string s("Somewhere down the road");
std::vector<std::string> result;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace, result ) )
{
for(size_t i = 0; i < result.size(); ++i )
std::cout << result[i] << std::endl;
}
}
{ // parsing a string into a vector of floats with other separators
// besides spaces
std::string s("3.0, 3.14; 4.0");
std::vector<float> values;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, values ) )
{
for(size_t i = 0; i < values.size(); ++i )
std::cout << values[i] << std::endl;
}
}
{ // parsing a string into specific variables
std::string s("angle = 45; radius = 9.9");
std::string w1, w2;
float v1, v2;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, w1, v1, w2, v2) )
{
std::cout << "word " << w1 << ", value " << v1 << std::endl;
std::cout << "word " << w2 << ", value " << v2 << std::endl;
}
}
return 0;
}
Adam Pierce's answer provides an hand-spun tokenizer taking in a const char*. It's a bit more problematic to do with iterators because incrementing a string's end iterator is undefined. That said, given string str{ "The quick brown fox" } we can certainly accomplish this:
auto start = find(cbegin(str), cend(str), ' ');
vector<string> tokens{ string(cbegin(str), start) };
while (start != cend(str)) {
const auto finish = find(++start, cend(str), ' ');
tokens.push_back(string(start, finish));
start = finish;
}
Live Example
If you're looking to abstract complexity by using standard functionality, as On Freund suggests strtok is a simple option:
vector<string> tokens;
for (auto i = strtok(data(str), " "); i != nullptr; i = strtok(nullptr, " ")) tokens.push_back(i);
If you don't have access to C++17 you'll need to substitute data(str) as in this example: http://ideone.com/8kAGoa
Though not demonstrated in the example, strtok need not use the same delimiter for each token. Along with this advantage though, there are several drawbacks:
strtok cannot be used on multiple strings at the same time: Either a nullptr must be passed to continue tokenizing the current string or a new char* to tokenize must be passed (there are some non-standard implementations which do support this however, such as: strtok_s)
For the same reason strtok cannot be used on multiple threads simultaneously (this may however be implementation defined, for example: Visual Studio's implementation is thread safe)
Calling strtok modifies the string it is operating on, so it cannot be used on const strings, const char*s, or literal strings, to tokenize any of these with strtok or to operate on a string who's contents need to be preserved, str would have to be copied, then the copy could be operated on
c++20 provides us with split_view to tokenize strings, in a non-destructive manner: https://topanswers.xyz/cplusplus?q=749#a874
The previous methods cannot generate a tokenized vector in-place, meaning without abstracting them into a helper function they cannot initialize const vector<string> tokens. That functionality and the ability to accept any white-space delimiter can be harnessed using an istream_iterator. For example given: const string str{ "The quick \tbrown \nfox" } we can do this:
istringstream is{ str };
const vector<string> tokens{ istream_iterator<string>(is), istream_iterator<string>() };
Live Example
The required construction of an istringstream for this option has far greater cost than the previous 2 options, however this cost is typically hidden in the expense of string allocation.
If none of the above options are flexable enough for your tokenization needs, the most flexible option is using a regex_token_iterator of course with this flexibility comes greater expense, but again this is likely hidden in the string allocation cost. Say for example we want to tokenize based on non-escaped commas, also eating white-space, given the following input: const string str{ "The ,qu\\,ick ,\tbrown, fox" } we can do this:
const regex re{ "\\s*((?:[^\\\\,]|\\\\.)*?)\\s*(?:,|$)" };
const vector<string> tokens{ sregex_token_iterator(cbegin(str), cend(str), re, 1), sregex_token_iterator() };
Live Example
Check this example. It might help you..
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
int main ()
{
string tmps;
istringstream is ("the dellimiter is the space");
while (is.good ()) {
is >> tmps;
cout << tmps << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
If you're using C++ ranges - the full ranges-v3 library, not the limited functionality accepted into C++20 - you could do it this way:
auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1);
... and this is lazily-evaluated. You can alternatively set a vector to this range:
auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1) | ranges::to<std::vector>();
this will take O(m) space and O(n) time if str has n characters making up m words.
See also the library's own tokenization example, here.
MFC/ATL has a very nice tokenizer. From MSDN:
CAtlString str( "%First Second#Third" );
CAtlString resToken;
int curPos= 0;
resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
while (resToken != "")
{
printf("Resulting token: %s\n", resToken);
resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
};
Output
Resulting Token: First
Resulting Token: Second
Resulting Token: Third
If you're willing to use C, you can use the strtok function. You should pay attention to multi-threading issues when using it.
For simple stuff I just use the following:
unsigned TokenizeString(const std::string& i_source,
const std::string& i_seperators,
bool i_discard_empty_tokens,
std::vector<std::string>& o_tokens)
{
unsigned prev_pos = 0;
unsigned pos = 0;
unsigned number_of_tokens = 0;
o_tokens.clear();
pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
while (pos != std::string::npos)
{
std::string token = i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos);
if (!i_discard_empty_tokens || token != "")
{
o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos));
number_of_tokens++;
}
pos++;
prev_pos = pos;
pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
}
if (prev_pos < i_source.length())
{
o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos));
number_of_tokens++;
}
return number_of_tokens;
}
Cowardly disclaimer: I write real-time data processing software where the data comes in through binary files, sockets, or some API call (I/O cards, camera's). I never use this function for something more complicated or time-critical than reading external configuration files on startup.
You can simply use a regular expression library and solve that using regular expressions.
Use expression (\w+) and the variable in \1 (or $1 depending on the library implementation of regular expressions).
Many overly complicated suggestions here. Try this simple std::string solution:
using namespace std;
string someText = ...
string::size_type tokenOff = 0, sepOff = tokenOff;
while (sepOff != string::npos)
{
sepOff = someText.find(' ', sepOff);
string::size_type tokenLen = (sepOff == string::npos) ? sepOff : sepOff++ - tokenOff;
string token = someText.substr(tokenOff, tokenLen);
if (!token.empty())
/* do something with token */;
tokenOff = sepOff;
}
I thought that was what the >> operator on string streams was for:
string word; sin >> word;
Here's an approach that allows you control over whether empty tokens are included (like strsep) or excluded (like strtok).
#include <string.h> // for strchr and strlen
/*
* want_empty_tokens==true : include empty tokens, like strsep()
* want_empty_tokens==false : exclude empty tokens, like strtok()
*/
std::vector<std::string> tokenize(const char* src,
char delim,
bool want_empty_tokens)
{
std::vector<std::string> tokens;
if (src and *src != '\0') // defensive
while( true ) {
const char* d = strchr(src, delim);
size_t len = (d)? d-src : strlen(src);
if (len or want_empty_tokens)
tokens.push_back( std::string(src, len) ); // capture token
if (d) src += len+1; else break;
}
return tokens;
}
Seems odd to me that with all us speed conscious nerds here on SO no one has presented a version that uses a compile time generated look up table for the delimiter (example implementation further down). Using a look up table and iterators should beat std::regex in efficiency, if you don't need to beat regex, just use it, its standard as of C++11 and super flexible.
Some have suggested regex already but for the noobs here is a packaged example that should do exactly what the OP expects:
std::vector<std::string> split(std::string::const_iterator it, std::string::const_iterator end, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){
std::smatch m{};
std::vector<std::string> ret{};
while (std::regex_search (it,end,m,e)) {
ret.emplace_back(m.str());
std::advance(it, m.position() + m.length()); //next start position = match position + match length
}
return ret;
}
std::vector<std::string> split(const std::string &s, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){ //comfort version calls flexible version
return split(s.cbegin(), s.cend(), std::move(e));
}
int main ()
{
std::string str {"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
auto v = split(str);
for(const auto&s:v){
std::cout << s << std::endl;
}
std::cout << "crazy version:" << std::endl;
v = split(str, std::regex{"[^e]+"}); //using e as delim shows flexibility
for(const auto&s:v){
std::cout << s << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}
If we need to be faster and accept the constraint that all chars must be 8 bits we can make a look up table at compile time using metaprogramming:
template<bool...> struct BoolSequence{}; //just here to hold bools
template<char...> struct CharSequence{}; //just here to hold chars
template<typename T, char C> struct Contains; //generic
template<char First, char... Cs, char Match> //not first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,Match> :
Contains<CharSequence<Cs...>, Match>{}; //strip first and increase index
template<char First, char... Cs> //is first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,First>: std::true_type {};
template<char Match> //not found specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<>,Match>: std::false_type{};
template<int I, typename T, typename U>
struct MakeSequence; //generic
template<int I, bool... Bs, typename U>
struct MakeSequence<I,BoolSequence<Bs...>, U>: //not last
MakeSequence<I-1, BoolSequence<Contains<U,I-1>::value,Bs...>, U>{};
template<bool... Bs, typename U>
struct MakeSequence<0,BoolSequence<Bs...>,U>{ //last
using Type = BoolSequence<Bs...>;
};
template<typename T> struct BoolASCIITable;
template<bool... Bs> struct BoolASCIITable<BoolSequence<Bs...>>{
/* could be made constexpr but not yet supported by MSVC */
static bool isDelim(const char c){
static const bool table[256] = {Bs...};
return table[static_cast<int>(c)];
}
};
using Delims = CharSequence<'.',',',' ',':','\n'>; //list your custom delimiters here
using Table = BoolASCIITable<typename MakeSequence<256,BoolSequence<>,Delims>::Type>;
With that in place making a getNextToken function is easy:
template<typename T_It>
std::pair<T_It,T_It> getNextToken(T_It begin,T_It end){
begin = std::find_if(begin,end,std::not1(Table{})); //find first non delim or end
auto second = std::find_if(begin,end,Table{}); //find first delim or end
return std::make_pair(begin,second);
}
Using it is also easy:
int main() {
std::string s{"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
auto it = std::begin(s);
auto end = std::end(s);
while(it != std::end(s)){
auto token = getNextToken(it,end);
std::cout << std::string(token.first,token.second) << std::endl;
it = token.second;
}
return 0;
}
Here is a live example: http://ideone.com/GKtkLQ
I know this question is already answered but I want to contribute. Maybe my solution is a bit simple but this is what I came up with:
vector<string> get_words(string const& text, string const& separator)
{
vector<string> result;
string tmp = text;
size_t first_pos = 0;
size_t second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
while (second_pos != string::npos)
{
if (first_pos != second_pos)
{
string word = tmp.substr(first_pos, second_pos - first_pos);
result.push_back(word);
}
tmp = tmp.substr(second_pos + separator.length());
second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
}
result.push_back(tmp);
return result;
}
Please comment if there is a better approach to something in my code or if something is wrong.
UPDATE: added generic separator
you can take advantage of boost::make_find_iterator. Something similar to this:
template<typename CH>
inline vector< basic_string<CH> > tokenize(
const basic_string<CH> &Input,
const basic_string<CH> &Delimiter,
bool remove_empty_token
) {
typedef typename basic_string<CH>::const_iterator string_iterator_t;
typedef boost::find_iterator< string_iterator_t > string_find_iterator_t;
vector< basic_string<CH> > Result;
string_iterator_t it = Input.begin();
string_iterator_t it_end = Input.end();
for(string_find_iterator_t i = boost::make_find_iterator(Input, boost::first_finder(Delimiter, boost::is_equal()));
i != string_find_iterator_t();
++i) {
if(remove_empty_token){
if(it != i->begin())
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
}
else
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
it = i->end();
}
if(it != it_end)
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,it_end));
return Result;
}
Here's my Swiss® Army Knife of string-tokenizers for splitting up strings by whitespace, accounting for single and double-quote wrapped strings as well as stripping those characters from the results. I used RegexBuddy 4.x to generate most of the code-snippet, but I added custom handling for stripping quotes and a few other things.
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#include <regex>
std::vector<std::wstring> tokenize_string(std::wstring string_to_tokenize) {
std::vector<std::wstring> tokens;
std::wregex re(LR"(("[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^"' ]+))", std::regex_constants::collate);
std::wsregex_iterator next( string_to_tokenize.begin(),
string_to_tokenize.end(),
re,
std::regex_constants::match_not_null );
std::wsregex_iterator end;
const wchar_t single_quote = L'\'';
const wchar_t double_quote = L'\"';
while ( next != end ) {
std::wsmatch match = *next;
const std::wstring token = match.str( 0 );
next++;
if (token.length() > 2 && (token.front() == double_quote || token.front() == single_quote))
tokens.emplace_back( std::wstring(token.begin()+1, token.begin()+token.length()-1) );
else
tokens.emplace_back(token);
}
return tokens;
}
I wrote a simplified version (and maybe a little bit efficient) of https://stackoverflow.com/a/50247503/3976739 for my own use. I hope it would help.
void StrTokenizer(string& source, const char* delimiter, vector<string>& Tokens)
{
size_t new_index = 0;
size_t old_index = 0;
while (new_index != std::string::npos)
{
new_index = source.find(delimiter, old_index);
Tokens.emplace_back(source.substr(old_index, new_index-old_index));
if (new_index != std::string::npos)
old_index = ++new_index;
}
}
If the maximum length of the input string to be tokenized is known, one can exploit this and implement a very fast version. I am sketching the basic idea below, which was inspired by both strtok() and the "suffix array"-data structure described Jon Bentley's "Programming Perls" 2nd edition, chapter 15. The C++ class in this case only gives some organization and convenience of use. The implementation shown can be easily extended for removing leading and trailing whitespace characters in the tokens.
Basically one can replace the separator characters with string-terminating '\0'-characters and set pointers to the tokens withing the modified string. In the extreme case when the string consists only of separators, one gets string-length plus 1 resulting empty tokens. It is practical to duplicate the string to be modified.
Header file:
class TextLineSplitter
{
public:
TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len );
~TextLineSplitter();
void SplitLine( const char *line,
const char sep_char = ',',
);
inline size_t NumTokens( void ) const
{
return mNumTokens;
}
const char * GetToken( const size_t token_idx ) const
{
assert( token_idx < mNumTokens );
return mTokens[ token_idx ];
}
private:
const size_t mStorageSize;
char *mBuff;
char **mTokens;
size_t mNumTokens;
inline void ResetContent( void )
{
memset( mBuff, 0, mStorageSize );
// mark all items as empty:
memset( mTokens, 0, mStorageSize * sizeof( char* ) );
// reset counter for found items:
mNumTokens = 0L;
}
};
Implementattion file:
TextLineSplitter::TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len ):
mStorageSize ( max_line_len + 1L )
{
// allocate memory
mBuff = new char [ mStorageSize ];
mTokens = new char* [ mStorageSize ];
ResetContent();
}
TextLineSplitter::~TextLineSplitter()
{
delete [] mBuff;
delete [] mTokens;
}
void TextLineSplitter::SplitLine( const char *line,
const char sep_char /* = ',' */,
)
{
assert( sep_char != '\0' );
ResetContent();
strncpy( mBuff, line, mMaxLineLen );
size_t idx = 0L; // running index for characters
do
{
assert( idx < mStorageSize );
const char chr = line[ idx ]; // retrieve current character
if( mTokens[ mNumTokens ] == NULL )
{
mTokens[ mNumTokens ] = &mBuff[ idx ];
} // if
if( chr == sep_char || chr == '\0' )
{ // item or line finished
// overwrite separator with a 0-terminating character:
mBuff[ idx ] = '\0';
// count-up items:
mNumTokens ++;
} // if
} while( line[ idx++ ] );
}
A scenario of usage would be:
// create an instance capable of splitting strings up to 1000 chars long:
TextLineSplitter spl( 1000 );
spl.SplitLine( "Item1,,Item2,Item3" );
for( size_t i = 0; i < spl.NumTokens(); i++ )
{
printf( "%s\n", spl.GetToken( i ) );
}
output:
Item1
Item2
Item3

How do I tokenize a string in C++?

Java has a convenient split method:
String str = "The quick brown fox";
String[] results = str.split(" ");
Is there an easy way to do this in C++?
The Boost tokenizer class can make this sort of thing quite simple:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/foreach.hpp>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
int main(int, char**)
{
string text = "token, test string";
char_separator<char> sep(", ");
tokenizer< char_separator<char> > tokens(text, sep);
BOOST_FOREACH (const string& t, tokens) {
cout << t << "." << endl;
}
}
Updated for C++11:
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>
using namespace std;
using namespace boost;
int main(int, char**)
{
string text = "token, test string";
char_separator<char> sep(", ");
tokenizer<char_separator<char>> tokens(text, sep);
for (const auto& t : tokens) {
cout << t << "." << endl;
}
}
Here's a real simple one:
#include <vector>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
vector<string> split(const char *str, char c = ' ')
{
vector<string> result;
do
{
const char *begin = str;
while(*str != c && *str)
str++;
result.push_back(string(begin, str));
} while (0 != *str++);
return result;
}
C++ standard library algorithms are pretty universally based around iterators rather than concrete containers. Unfortunately this makes it hard to provide a Java-like split function in the C++ standard library, even though nobody argues that this would be convenient. But what would its return type be? std::vector<std::basic_string<…>>? Maybe, but then we’re forced to perform (potentially redundant and costly) allocations.
Instead, C++ offers a plethora of ways to split strings based on arbitrarily complex delimiters, but none of them is encapsulated as nicely as in other languages. The numerous ways fill whole blog posts.
At its simplest, you could iterate using std::string::find until you hit std::string::npos, and extract the contents using std::string::substr.
A more fluid (and idiomatic, but basic) version for splitting on whitespace would use a std::istringstream:
auto iss = std::istringstream{"The quick brown fox"};
auto str = std::string{};
while (iss >> str) {
process(str);
}
Using std::istream_iterators, the contents of the string stream could also be copied into a vector using its iterator range constructor.
Multiple libraries (such as Boost.Tokenizer) offer specific tokenisers.
More advanced splitting require regular expressions. C++ provides the std::regex_token_iterator for this purpose in particular:
auto const str = "The quick brown fox"s;
auto const re = std::regex{R"(\s+)"};
auto const vec = std::vector<std::string>(
std::sregex_token_iterator{begin(str), end(str), re, -1},
std::sregex_token_iterator{}
);
Another quick way is to use getline. Something like:
stringstream ss("bla bla");
string s;
while (getline(ss, s, ' ')) {
cout << s << endl;
}
If you want, you can make a simple split() method returning a vector<string>, which is
really useful.
Use strtok. In my opinion, there isn't a need to build a class around tokenizing unless strtok doesn't provide you with what you need. It might not, but in 15+ years of writing various parsing code in C and C++, I've always used strtok. Here is an example
char myString[] = "The quick brown fox";
char *p = strtok(myString, " ");
while (p) {
printf ("Token: %s\n", p);
p = strtok(NULL, " ");
}
A few caveats (which might not suit your needs). The string is "destroyed" in the process, meaning that EOS characters are placed inline in the delimter spots. Correct usage might require you to make a non-const version of the string. You can also change the list of delimiters mid parse.
In my own opinion, the above code is far simpler and easier to use than writing a separate class for it. To me, this is one of those functions that the language provides and it does it well and cleanly. It's simply a "C based" solution. It's appropriate, it's easy, and you don't have to write a lot of extra code :-)
You can use streams, iterators, and the copy algorithm to do this fairly directly.
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <istream>
#include <ostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <sstream>
#include <algorithm>
int main()
{
std::string str = "The quick brown fox";
// construct a stream from the string
std::stringstream strstr(str);
// use stream iterators to copy the stream to the vector as whitespace separated strings
std::istream_iterator<std::string> it(strstr);
std::istream_iterator<std::string> end;
std::vector<std::string> results(it, end);
// send the vector to stdout.
std::ostream_iterator<std::string> oit(std::cout);
std::copy(results.begin(), results.end(), oit);
}
A solution using regex_token_iterators:
#include <iostream>
#include <regex>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
string str("The quick brown fox");
regex reg("\\s+");
sregex_token_iterator iter(str.begin(), str.end(), reg, -1);
sregex_token_iterator end;
vector<string> vec(iter, end);
for (auto a : vec)
{
cout << a << endl;
}
}
No offense folks, but for such a simple problem, you are making things way too complicated. There are a lot of reasons to use Boost. But for something this simple, it's like hitting a fly with a 20# sledge.
void
split( vector<string> & theStringVector, /* Altered/returned value */
const string & theString,
const string & theDelimiter)
{
UASSERT( theDelimiter.size(), >, 0); // My own ASSERT macro.
size_t start = 0, end = 0;
while ( end != string::npos)
{
end = theString.find( theDelimiter, start);
// If at end, use length=maxLength. Else use length=end-start.
theStringVector.push_back( theString.substr( start,
(end == string::npos) ? string::npos : end - start));
// If at end, use start=maxSize. Else use start=end+delimiter.
start = ( ( end > (string::npos - theDelimiter.size()) )
? string::npos : end + theDelimiter.size());
}
}
For example (for Doug's case),
#define SHOW(I,X) cout << "[" << (I) << "]\t " # X " = \"" << (X) << "\"" << endl
int
main()
{
vector<string> v;
split( v, "A:PEP:909:Inventory Item", ":" );
for (unsigned int i = 0; i < v.size(); i++)
SHOW( i, v[i] );
}
And yes, we could have split() return a new vector rather than passing one in. It's trivial to wrap and overload. But depending on what I'm doing, I often find it better to re-use pre-existing objects rather than always creating new ones. (Just as long as I don't forget to empty the vector in between!)
Reference: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/.
(I was originally writing a response to Doug's question: C++ Strings Modifying and Extracting based on Separators (closed). But since Martin York closed that question with a pointer over here... I'll just generalize my code.)
Boost has a strong split function: boost::algorithm::split.
Sample program:
#include <vector>
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>
int main() {
auto s = "a,b, c ,,e,f,";
std::vector<std::string> fields;
boost::split(fields, s, boost::is_any_of(","));
for (const auto& field : fields)
std::cout << "\"" << field << "\"\n";
return 0;
}
Output:
"a"
"b"
" c "
""
"e"
"f"
""
This is a simple STL-only solution (~5 lines!) using std::find and std::find_first_not_of that handles repetitions of the delimiter (like spaces or periods for instance), as well leading and trailing delimiters:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
void tokenize(std::string str, std::vector<string> &token_v){
size_t start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER), end=start;
while (start != std::string::npos){
// Find next occurence of delimiter
end = str.find(DELIMITER, start);
// Push back the token found into vector
token_v.push_back(str.substr(start, end-start));
// Skip all occurences of the delimiter to find new start
start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER, end);
}
}
Try it out live!
I know you asked for a C++ solution, but you might consider this helpful:
Qt
#include <QString>
...
QString str = "The quick brown fox";
QStringList results = str.split(" ");
The advantage over Boost in this example is that it's a direct one to one mapping to your post's code.
See more at Qt documentation
Here is a sample tokenizer class that might do what you want
//Header file
class Tokenizer
{
public:
static const std::string DELIMITERS;
Tokenizer(const std::string& str);
Tokenizer(const std::string& str, const std::string& delimiters);
bool NextToken();
bool NextToken(const std::string& delimiters);
const std::string GetToken() const;
void Reset();
protected:
size_t m_offset;
const std::string m_string;
std::string m_token;
std::string m_delimiters;
};
//CPP file
const std::string Tokenizer::DELIMITERS(" \t\n\r");
Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s) :
m_string(s),
m_offset(0),
m_delimiters(DELIMITERS) {}
Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s, const std::string& delimiters) :
m_string(s),
m_offset(0),
m_delimiters(delimiters) {}
bool Tokenizer::NextToken()
{
return NextToken(m_delimiters);
}
bool Tokenizer::NextToken(const std::string& delimiters)
{
size_t i = m_string.find_first_not_of(delimiters, m_offset);
if (std::string::npos == i)
{
m_offset = m_string.length();
return false;
}
size_t j = m_string.find_first_of(delimiters, i);
if (std::string::npos == j)
{
m_token = m_string.substr(i);
m_offset = m_string.length();
return true;
}
m_token = m_string.substr(i, j - i);
m_offset = j;
return true;
}
Example:
std::vector <std::string> v;
Tokenizer s("split this string", " ");
while (s.NextToken())
{
v.push_back(s.GetToken());
}
pystring is a small library which implements a bunch of Python's string functions, including the split method:
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include "pystring.h"
std::vector<std::string> chunks;
pystring::split("this string", chunks);
// also can specify a separator
pystring::split("this-string", chunks, "-");
I posted this answer for similar question.
Don't reinvent the wheel. I've used a number of libraries and the fastest and most flexible I have come across is: C++ String Toolkit Library.
Here is an example of how to use it that I've posted else where on the stackoverflow.
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <strtk.hpp>
const char *whitespace = " \t\r\n\f";
const char *whitespace_and_punctuation = " \t\r\n\f;,=";
int main()
{
{ // normal parsing of a string into a vector of strings
std::string s("Somewhere down the road");
std::vector<std::string> result;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace, result ) )
{
for(size_t i = 0; i < result.size(); ++i )
std::cout << result[i] << std::endl;
}
}
{ // parsing a string into a vector of floats with other separators
// besides spaces
std::string s("3.0, 3.14; 4.0");
std::vector<float> values;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, values ) )
{
for(size_t i = 0; i < values.size(); ++i )
std::cout << values[i] << std::endl;
}
}
{ // parsing a string into specific variables
std::string s("angle = 45; radius = 9.9");
std::string w1, w2;
float v1, v2;
if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, w1, v1, w2, v2) )
{
std::cout << "word " << w1 << ", value " << v1 << std::endl;
std::cout << "word " << w2 << ", value " << v2 << std::endl;
}
}
return 0;
}
Adam Pierce's answer provides an hand-spun tokenizer taking in a const char*. It's a bit more problematic to do with iterators because incrementing a string's end iterator is undefined. That said, given string str{ "The quick brown fox" } we can certainly accomplish this:
auto start = find(cbegin(str), cend(str), ' ');
vector<string> tokens{ string(cbegin(str), start) };
while (start != cend(str)) {
const auto finish = find(++start, cend(str), ' ');
tokens.push_back(string(start, finish));
start = finish;
}
Live Example
If you're looking to abstract complexity by using standard functionality, as On Freund suggests strtok is a simple option:
vector<string> tokens;
for (auto i = strtok(data(str), " "); i != nullptr; i = strtok(nullptr, " ")) tokens.push_back(i);
If you don't have access to C++17 you'll need to substitute data(str) as in this example: http://ideone.com/8kAGoa
Though not demonstrated in the example, strtok need not use the same delimiter for each token. Along with this advantage though, there are several drawbacks:
strtok cannot be used on multiple strings at the same time: Either a nullptr must be passed to continue tokenizing the current string or a new char* to tokenize must be passed (there are some non-standard implementations which do support this however, such as: strtok_s)
For the same reason strtok cannot be used on multiple threads simultaneously (this may however be implementation defined, for example: Visual Studio's implementation is thread safe)
Calling strtok modifies the string it is operating on, so it cannot be used on const strings, const char*s, or literal strings, to tokenize any of these with strtok or to operate on a string who's contents need to be preserved, str would have to be copied, then the copy could be operated on
c++20 provides us with split_view to tokenize strings, in a non-destructive manner: https://topanswers.xyz/cplusplus?q=749#a874
The previous methods cannot generate a tokenized vector in-place, meaning without abstracting them into a helper function they cannot initialize const vector<string> tokens. That functionality and the ability to accept any white-space delimiter can be harnessed using an istream_iterator. For example given: const string str{ "The quick \tbrown \nfox" } we can do this:
istringstream is{ str };
const vector<string> tokens{ istream_iterator<string>(is), istream_iterator<string>() };
Live Example
The required construction of an istringstream for this option has far greater cost than the previous 2 options, however this cost is typically hidden in the expense of string allocation.
If none of the above options are flexable enough for your tokenization needs, the most flexible option is using a regex_token_iterator of course with this flexibility comes greater expense, but again this is likely hidden in the string allocation cost. Say for example we want to tokenize based on non-escaped commas, also eating white-space, given the following input: const string str{ "The ,qu\\,ick ,\tbrown, fox" } we can do this:
const regex re{ "\\s*((?:[^\\\\,]|\\\\.)*?)\\s*(?:,|$)" };
const vector<string> tokens{ sregex_token_iterator(cbegin(str), cend(str), re, 1), sregex_token_iterator() };
Live Example
Check this example. It might help you..
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
int main ()
{
string tmps;
istringstream is ("the dellimiter is the space");
while (is.good ()) {
is >> tmps;
cout << tmps << "\n";
}
return 0;
}
If you're using C++ ranges - the full ranges-v3 library, not the limited functionality accepted into C++20 - you could do it this way:
auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1);
... and this is lazily-evaluated. You can alternatively set a vector to this range:
auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1) | ranges::to<std::vector>();
this will take O(m) space and O(n) time if str has n characters making up m words.
See also the library's own tokenization example, here.
MFC/ATL has a very nice tokenizer. From MSDN:
CAtlString str( "%First Second#Third" );
CAtlString resToken;
int curPos= 0;
resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
while (resToken != "")
{
printf("Resulting token: %s\n", resToken);
resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
};
Output
Resulting Token: First
Resulting Token: Second
Resulting Token: Third
If you're willing to use C, you can use the strtok function. You should pay attention to multi-threading issues when using it.
For simple stuff I just use the following:
unsigned TokenizeString(const std::string& i_source,
const std::string& i_seperators,
bool i_discard_empty_tokens,
std::vector<std::string>& o_tokens)
{
unsigned prev_pos = 0;
unsigned pos = 0;
unsigned number_of_tokens = 0;
o_tokens.clear();
pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
while (pos != std::string::npos)
{
std::string token = i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos);
if (!i_discard_empty_tokens || token != "")
{
o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos));
number_of_tokens++;
}
pos++;
prev_pos = pos;
pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
}
if (prev_pos < i_source.length())
{
o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos));
number_of_tokens++;
}
return number_of_tokens;
}
Cowardly disclaimer: I write real-time data processing software where the data comes in through binary files, sockets, or some API call (I/O cards, camera's). I never use this function for something more complicated or time-critical than reading external configuration files on startup.
You can simply use a regular expression library and solve that using regular expressions.
Use expression (\w+) and the variable in \1 (or $1 depending on the library implementation of regular expressions).
Many overly complicated suggestions here. Try this simple std::string solution:
using namespace std;
string someText = ...
string::size_type tokenOff = 0, sepOff = tokenOff;
while (sepOff != string::npos)
{
sepOff = someText.find(' ', sepOff);
string::size_type tokenLen = (sepOff == string::npos) ? sepOff : sepOff++ - tokenOff;
string token = someText.substr(tokenOff, tokenLen);
if (!token.empty())
/* do something with token */;
tokenOff = sepOff;
}
I thought that was what the >> operator on string streams was for:
string word; sin >> word;
Here's an approach that allows you control over whether empty tokens are included (like strsep) or excluded (like strtok).
#include <string.h> // for strchr and strlen
/*
* want_empty_tokens==true : include empty tokens, like strsep()
* want_empty_tokens==false : exclude empty tokens, like strtok()
*/
std::vector<std::string> tokenize(const char* src,
char delim,
bool want_empty_tokens)
{
std::vector<std::string> tokens;
if (src and *src != '\0') // defensive
while( true ) {
const char* d = strchr(src, delim);
size_t len = (d)? d-src : strlen(src);
if (len or want_empty_tokens)
tokens.push_back( std::string(src, len) ); // capture token
if (d) src += len+1; else break;
}
return tokens;
}
Seems odd to me that with all us speed conscious nerds here on SO no one has presented a version that uses a compile time generated look up table for the delimiter (example implementation further down). Using a look up table and iterators should beat std::regex in efficiency, if you don't need to beat regex, just use it, its standard as of C++11 and super flexible.
Some have suggested regex already but for the noobs here is a packaged example that should do exactly what the OP expects:
std::vector<std::string> split(std::string::const_iterator it, std::string::const_iterator end, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){
std::smatch m{};
std::vector<std::string> ret{};
while (std::regex_search (it,end,m,e)) {
ret.emplace_back(m.str());
std::advance(it, m.position() + m.length()); //next start position = match position + match length
}
return ret;
}
std::vector<std::string> split(const std::string &s, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){ //comfort version calls flexible version
return split(s.cbegin(), s.cend(), std::move(e));
}
int main ()
{
std::string str {"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
auto v = split(str);
for(const auto&s:v){
std::cout << s << std::endl;
}
std::cout << "crazy version:" << std::endl;
v = split(str, std::regex{"[^e]+"}); //using e as delim shows flexibility
for(const auto&s:v){
std::cout << s << std::endl;
}
return 0;
}
If we need to be faster and accept the constraint that all chars must be 8 bits we can make a look up table at compile time using metaprogramming:
template<bool...> struct BoolSequence{}; //just here to hold bools
template<char...> struct CharSequence{}; //just here to hold chars
template<typename T, char C> struct Contains; //generic
template<char First, char... Cs, char Match> //not first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,Match> :
Contains<CharSequence<Cs...>, Match>{}; //strip first and increase index
template<char First, char... Cs> //is first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,First>: std::true_type {};
template<char Match> //not found specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<>,Match>: std::false_type{};
template<int I, typename T, typename U>
struct MakeSequence; //generic
template<int I, bool... Bs, typename U>
struct MakeSequence<I,BoolSequence<Bs...>, U>: //not last
MakeSequence<I-1, BoolSequence<Contains<U,I-1>::value,Bs...>, U>{};
template<bool... Bs, typename U>
struct MakeSequence<0,BoolSequence<Bs...>,U>{ //last
using Type = BoolSequence<Bs...>;
};
template<typename T> struct BoolASCIITable;
template<bool... Bs> struct BoolASCIITable<BoolSequence<Bs...>>{
/* could be made constexpr but not yet supported by MSVC */
static bool isDelim(const char c){
static const bool table[256] = {Bs...};
return table[static_cast<int>(c)];
}
};
using Delims = CharSequence<'.',',',' ',':','\n'>; //list your custom delimiters here
using Table = BoolASCIITable<typename MakeSequence<256,BoolSequence<>,Delims>::Type>;
With that in place making a getNextToken function is easy:
template<typename T_It>
std::pair<T_It,T_It> getNextToken(T_It begin,T_It end){
begin = std::find_if(begin,end,std::not1(Table{})); //find first non delim or end
auto second = std::find_if(begin,end,Table{}); //find first delim or end
return std::make_pair(begin,second);
}
Using it is also easy:
int main() {
std::string s{"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
auto it = std::begin(s);
auto end = std::end(s);
while(it != std::end(s)){
auto token = getNextToken(it,end);
std::cout << std::string(token.first,token.second) << std::endl;
it = token.second;
}
return 0;
}
Here is a live example: http://ideone.com/GKtkLQ
I know this question is already answered but I want to contribute. Maybe my solution is a bit simple but this is what I came up with:
vector<string> get_words(string const& text, string const& separator)
{
vector<string> result;
string tmp = text;
size_t first_pos = 0;
size_t second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
while (second_pos != string::npos)
{
if (first_pos != second_pos)
{
string word = tmp.substr(first_pos, second_pos - first_pos);
result.push_back(word);
}
tmp = tmp.substr(second_pos + separator.length());
second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
}
result.push_back(tmp);
return result;
}
Please comment if there is a better approach to something in my code or if something is wrong.
UPDATE: added generic separator
you can take advantage of boost::make_find_iterator. Something similar to this:
template<typename CH>
inline vector< basic_string<CH> > tokenize(
const basic_string<CH> &Input,
const basic_string<CH> &Delimiter,
bool remove_empty_token
) {
typedef typename basic_string<CH>::const_iterator string_iterator_t;
typedef boost::find_iterator< string_iterator_t > string_find_iterator_t;
vector< basic_string<CH> > Result;
string_iterator_t it = Input.begin();
string_iterator_t it_end = Input.end();
for(string_find_iterator_t i = boost::make_find_iterator(Input, boost::first_finder(Delimiter, boost::is_equal()));
i != string_find_iterator_t();
++i) {
if(remove_empty_token){
if(it != i->begin())
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
}
else
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
it = i->end();
}
if(it != it_end)
Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,it_end));
return Result;
}
Here's my Swiss® Army Knife of string-tokenizers for splitting up strings by whitespace, accounting for single and double-quote wrapped strings as well as stripping those characters from the results. I used RegexBuddy 4.x to generate most of the code-snippet, but I added custom handling for stripping quotes and a few other things.
#include <string>
#include <locale>
#include <regex>
std::vector<std::wstring> tokenize_string(std::wstring string_to_tokenize) {
std::vector<std::wstring> tokens;
std::wregex re(LR"(("[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^"' ]+))", std::regex_constants::collate);
std::wsregex_iterator next( string_to_tokenize.begin(),
string_to_tokenize.end(),
re,
std::regex_constants::match_not_null );
std::wsregex_iterator end;
const wchar_t single_quote = L'\'';
const wchar_t double_quote = L'\"';
while ( next != end ) {
std::wsmatch match = *next;
const std::wstring token = match.str( 0 );
next++;
if (token.length() > 2 && (token.front() == double_quote || token.front() == single_quote))
tokens.emplace_back( std::wstring(token.begin()+1, token.begin()+token.length()-1) );
else
tokens.emplace_back(token);
}
return tokens;
}
I wrote a simplified version (and maybe a little bit efficient) of https://stackoverflow.com/a/50247503/3976739 for my own use. I hope it would help.
void StrTokenizer(string& source, const char* delimiter, vector<string>& Tokens)
{
size_t new_index = 0;
size_t old_index = 0;
while (new_index != std::string::npos)
{
new_index = source.find(delimiter, old_index);
Tokens.emplace_back(source.substr(old_index, new_index-old_index));
if (new_index != std::string::npos)
old_index = ++new_index;
}
}
If the maximum length of the input string to be tokenized is known, one can exploit this and implement a very fast version. I am sketching the basic idea below, which was inspired by both strtok() and the "suffix array"-data structure described Jon Bentley's "Programming Perls" 2nd edition, chapter 15. The C++ class in this case only gives some organization and convenience of use. The implementation shown can be easily extended for removing leading and trailing whitespace characters in the tokens.
Basically one can replace the separator characters with string-terminating '\0'-characters and set pointers to the tokens withing the modified string. In the extreme case when the string consists only of separators, one gets string-length plus 1 resulting empty tokens. It is practical to duplicate the string to be modified.
Header file:
class TextLineSplitter
{
public:
TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len );
~TextLineSplitter();
void SplitLine( const char *line,
const char sep_char = ',',
);
inline size_t NumTokens( void ) const
{
return mNumTokens;
}
const char * GetToken( const size_t token_idx ) const
{
assert( token_idx < mNumTokens );
return mTokens[ token_idx ];
}
private:
const size_t mStorageSize;
char *mBuff;
char **mTokens;
size_t mNumTokens;
inline void ResetContent( void )
{
memset( mBuff, 0, mStorageSize );
// mark all items as empty:
memset( mTokens, 0, mStorageSize * sizeof( char* ) );
// reset counter for found items:
mNumTokens = 0L;
}
};
Implementattion file:
TextLineSplitter::TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len ):
mStorageSize ( max_line_len + 1L )
{
// allocate memory
mBuff = new char [ mStorageSize ];
mTokens = new char* [ mStorageSize ];
ResetContent();
}
TextLineSplitter::~TextLineSplitter()
{
delete [] mBuff;
delete [] mTokens;
}
void TextLineSplitter::SplitLine( const char *line,
const char sep_char /* = ',' */,
)
{
assert( sep_char != '\0' );
ResetContent();
strncpy( mBuff, line, mMaxLineLen );
size_t idx = 0L; // running index for characters
do
{
assert( idx < mStorageSize );
const char chr = line[ idx ]; // retrieve current character
if( mTokens[ mNumTokens ] == NULL )
{
mTokens[ mNumTokens ] = &mBuff[ idx ];
} // if
if( chr == sep_char || chr == '\0' )
{ // item or line finished
// overwrite separator with a 0-terminating character:
mBuff[ idx ] = '\0';
// count-up items:
mNumTokens ++;
} // if
} while( line[ idx++ ] );
}
A scenario of usage would be:
// create an instance capable of splitting strings up to 1000 chars long:
TextLineSplitter spl( 1000 );
spl.SplitLine( "Item1,,Item2,Item3" );
for( size_t i = 0; i < spl.NumTokens(); i++ )
{
printf( "%s\n", spl.GetToken( i ) );
}
output:
Item1
Item2
Item3