std:: strtok

Finds the next token in a null-terminated byte string pointed to by str . The separator characters are identified by null-terminated byte string pointed to by delim .

This function is designed to be called multiple times to obtain successive tokens from the same string.

• If str is not a null pointer, the call is treated as the first call to strtok for this particular string. The function searches for the first character which is not contained in delim .

• If no such character was found, there are no tokens in str at all, and the function returns a null pointer.
• If such character was found, it is the beginning of the token . The function then searches from that point on for the first character that is contained in delim .

• If no such character was found, str has only one token, and the future calls to strtok will return a null pointer.
• If such character was found, it is replaced by the null character ' \0 ' and the pointer to the following character is stored in a static location for subsequent invocations.

• The function then returns the pointer to the beginning of the token.

• If str is a null pointer, the call is treated as a subsequent call to strtok : the function continues from where it left in previous invocation. The behavior is the same as if the previously stored pointer is passed as str .

Parameters

Return value

Pointer to the beginning of the next token or a nullptr if there are no more tokens.

Notes

This function is destructive: it writes the ' \0 ' characters in the elements of the string str . In particular, a string literal cannot be used as the first argument of std::strtok .

Each call to this function modifies a static variable: is not thread safe.

Unlike most other tokenizers, the delimiters in std::strtok can be different for each subsequent token, and can even depend on the contents of the previous tokens.

Possible implementation

char* strtok(char* str, const char* delim)
{
    static char* buffer;
 
    if (str != nullptr)
        buffer = str;
 
    buffer += std::strspn(buffer, delim);
 
    if (*buffer == '\0')
        return nullptr;
 
    char* const tokenBegin = buffer;
 
    buffer += std::strcspn(buffer, delim);
 
    if (*buffer != '\0')
        *buffer++ = '\0';
 
    return tokenBegin;
}

Actual C++ library implementations of this function delegate to the C library, where it may be implemented directly (as in MUSL libc ), or in terms of its reentrant version (as in GNU libc ).

Example

#include <cstring>
#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>
 
int main() 
{
    char input[] = "one + two * (three - four)!";
    const char* delimiters = "! +- (*)";
    char* token = std::strtok(input, delimiters);
    while (token)
    {
        std::cout << std::quoted(token) << ' ';
        token = std::strtok(nullptr, delimiters);
    }
 
    std::cout << "\nContents of the input string now:\n\"";
    for (std::size_t n = 0; n < sizeof input; ++n)
    {
        if (const char c = input[n]; c != '\0')
            std::cout << c;
        else
            std::cout << "\\0";
    }
    std::cout << "\"\n";
}

"one" "two" "three" "four" 
Contents of the input string now:
"one\0+ two\0* (three\0- four\0!\0"

See also