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

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 is-
       space(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 re-
       placing the separator character following a word	with  '\0'.   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  is-
       space(3),  if  sep is the empty string).	 The src string	is modified by
       replacing the separator character after each word with '\0'.  A pointer
       to each word is stored into successive elements of the array words.  If
       there are more than maxw	words, a '\0' 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\n", 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\n", 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(3)

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