Split string with delimiters in C

Question

How do I write a function to split and return an array for a string with delimiters in the C programming language?

char* str = \"JAN,FEB,MAR,APR,MAY,JUN,JUL,         


        

Answer 1

This optimized method create (or update an existing) array of pointers in *result and returns the number of elements in *count.

Use "max" to indicate the maximum number of strings you expect (when you specify an existing array or any other reaseon), else set it to 0

To compare against a list of delimiters, define delim as a char* and replace the line:

if (str[i]==delim) {

with the two following lines:

 char *c=delim; while(*c && *c!=str[i]) c++;
 if (*c) {

Enjoy

#include 
#include 

char **split(char *str, size_t len, char delim, char ***result, unsigned long *count, unsigned long max) {
  size_t i;
  char **_result;

  // there is at least one string returned
  *count=1;

  _result= *result;

  // when the result array is specified, fill it during the first pass
  if (_result) {
    _result[0]=str;
  }

  // scan the string for delimiter, up to specified length
  for (i=0; i

Usage example:

#include 

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
  char *str="JAN,FEB,MAR,APR,MAY,JUN,JUL,AUG,SEP,OCT,NOV,DEC";
  char **result=malloc(6*sizeof(char*));
  char **result2=0;
  unsigned long count;
  unsigned long count2;
  unsigned long i;

  split(strdup(str),strlen(str),',',&result,&count,6);
  split(strdup(str),strlen(str),',',&result2,&count2,0);

  if (result)
  for (i=0; i