C++ converting a mac id string into an array of uint8_t

Question

I want to read a mac id from command line and convert it to an array of uint8_t values to use it in a struct. I can not get it to work. I have a vector of stri

Answer 1

I hate to answer this in this fashion, but sscanf() is probably the most succinct way to parse out a MAC address. It handles zero/non-zero padding, width checking, case folding, and all of that other stuff that no one likes to deal with. Anyway, here's my not so C++ version:

void
parse_mac(std::vector& out, std::string const& in) {
    unsigned int bytes[6];
    if (std::sscanf(in.c_str(),
                    "%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x",
                    &bytes[0], &bytes[1], &bytes[2],
                    &bytes[3], &bytes[4], &bytes[5]) != 6)
    {
        throw std::runtime_error(in+std::string(" is an invalid MAC address"));
    }
    out.assign(&bytes[0], &bytes[6]);
}