STRSPLIT(3pub)						       C Programmer's Manual						    STRSPLIT(3pub)

NAME

       strsplit - split string into words

SYNOPSIS

       #include <publib.h>
       int strsplit(char *src, char **words, int maxw, const char *sep);

DESCRIPTION

       strsplit  splits  the src string into words separated by one or more of the characters in sep (or by whitespace characters, as specified by
       isspace(3), if sep is the empty string).  Pointers to the words are stored in successive elements in the array pointed  to  by  words.	No
       more than maxw pointers are stored.  The input string is modifed by replacing the separator character following a word with ''.  However,
       if there are more than maxw words, only maxw-1 words will be returned, and the maxwth pointer in the array will point to the  rest  of  the
       string.	 If  maxw is 0, no modification is done.  This can be used for counting how many words there are, e.g., so that space for the word
       pointer table can be allocated dynamically.

       strsplit splits the src string into words separated by one or more of the characters in sep (or by whitespace  characters,  as  defined	by
       isspace(3),  if	sep  is  the empty string).  The src string is modified by replacing the separator character after each word with ''.  A
       pointer to each word is stored into successive elements of the array words.  If there are more than maxw words, a '' is stored after  the
       first maxw-1 words only, and the words[maxw-1] will contain a pointer to the rest of the string after the word in words[maxw-2].

RETURN VALUE

       strsplit returns the total number of words in the input string.

EXAMPLE

       Assuming that words are separated by white space, to count the number of words on a line, one might say the following.

	    n = strsplit(line, NULL, 0, "");

       To print out the fields of a colon-separated list (such as PATH, or a
       line from /etc/passwd or /etc/group), one might do the following.

	    char *fields[15];
	    int i, n;

	    n = strsplit(list, fields, 15, ":");
	    if (n > 15)
		 n = 15;
	    for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)
		 printf("field %d: %s
", i, fields[i]);

       In real life, one would of course prefer to not restrict the number of
       fields, so one might either allocated the pointer table dynamically
       (first counting the number of words using something like the first
       example), or realize that since it is the original string that is
       being modified, one can do the following:

	    char *fields[15];
	    int i, n;

	    do {
		 n = strsplit(list, fields, 15, ":");
		 if (n > 15)
		      n = 15;
		 for (i = 0; i < n; ++i)
		      printf("field %d: %s
", i, fields[i]);
		 list = field[n-1] + strlen(field[n-1]);
	    } while (n == 15);

SEE ALSO

       publib(3), strtok(3)

AUTHOR

       The  idea  for  this  function  came  from C-News source code by Henry Spencer and Geoff Collyer.  Their function is very similar, but this
       implementation is by Lars Wirzenius (lars.wirzenius@helsinki.fi)

Publib							       C Programmer's Manual						    STRSPLIT(3pub)