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 '\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 isspace(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)