478

Java has a convenient split method:

String str = "The quick brown fox";
String[] results = str.split(" ");

Is there an easy way to do this in C++?

2

37 Answers 37

194

The Boost tokenizer class can make this sort of thing quite simple:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/foreach.hpp>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>

using namespace std;
using namespace boost;

int main(int, char**)
{
    string text = "token, test   string";

    char_separator<char> sep(", ");
    tokenizer< char_separator<char> > tokens(text, sep);
    BOOST_FOREACH (const string& t, tokens) {
        cout << t << "." << endl;
    }
}

Updated for C++11:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <boost/tokenizer.hpp>

using namespace std;
using namespace boost;

int main(int, char**)
{
    string text = "token, test   string";

    char_separator<char> sep(", ");
    tokenizer<char_separator<char>> tokens(text, sep);
    for (const auto& t : tokens) {
        cout << t << "." << endl;
    }
}
7
  • 1
    Good stuff, I've recently utilized this. My Visual Studio compiler has an odd whinge until I use a whitespace to separate the two ">" characters before the tokens(text, sep) bit: (error C2947: expecting '>' to terminate template-argument-list, found '>>')
    – AndyUK
    Commented Oct 1, 2010 at 15:57
  • @AndyUK yes, without the space the compiler parses it as an extraction operator rather than two closing templates. Commented Jun 14, 2011 at 3:23
  • Theoretically that's been fixed in C++0x Commented Sep 1, 2011 at 2:09
  • 3
    beware of the third parameters of the char_separator constructor (drop_empty_tokens is the default, alternative is keep_empty_tokens).
    – Benoit
    Commented Feb 17, 2012 at 10:56
  • 5
    @puk - It's a commonly used suffix for C++ header files. (like .h for C headers)
    – Ferruccio
    Commented Dec 12, 2013 at 22:44
185

Here's a real simple one:

#include <vector>
#include <string>

vector<string> split(const char *str, char c = ' ')
{
    std::vector<std::string> result;

    do
    {
        const char *begin = str;

        while(*str != c && *str)
            str++;

        result.push_back(std::string(begin, str));
    } while (0 != *str++);

    return result;
}
6
  • do I need to add a prototype for this method in .h file ? Commented Dec 22, 2011 at 8:26
  • 12
    This is not exactly the "best" answer as it still uses a string literal which is the plain C constant character array. I believe the questioner was asking if he could tokenize a C++ string which is of type "string" introduced by the latter. Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 7:05
  • This needs a new answer because I strongly suspect the inclusion of regular expressions in C++11 has changed what the best answer would be. Commented Oct 25, 2017 at 15:45
  • 1
    To this answer have problem with strings that the first/last char is equal to the separator. e.g. the string " a" results is [" ", "a"].
    – y30
    Commented Nov 13, 2020 at 11:26
  • @y30: I think it results in ["","a"].
    – einpoklum
    Commented Nov 25, 2023 at 8:40
177

C++ standard library algorithms are pretty universally based around iterators rather than concrete containers. Unfortunately this makes it hard to provide a Java-like split function in the C++ standard library, even though nobody argues that this would be convenient. But what would its return type be? std::vector<std::basic_string<…>>? Maybe, but then we’re forced to perform (potentially redundant and costly) allocations.

Instead, C++ offers a plethora of ways to split strings based on arbitrarily complex delimiters, but none of them is encapsulated as nicely as in other languages. The numerous ways fill whole blog posts.

At its simplest, you could iterate using std::string::find until you hit std::string::npos, and extract the contents using std::string::substr.

A more fluid (and idiomatic, but basic) version for splitting on whitespace would use a std::istringstream:

auto iss = std::istringstream{"The quick brown fox"};
auto str = std::string{};

while (iss >> str) {
    process(str);
}

Using std::istream_iterators, the contents of the string stream could also be copied into a vector using its iterator range constructor.

Multiple libraries (such as Boost.Tokenizer) offer specific tokenisers.

More advanced splitting require regular expressions. C++ provides the std::regex_token_iterator for this purpose in particular:

auto const str = "The quick brown fox"s;
auto const re = std::regex{R"(\s+)"};
auto const vec = std::vector<std::string>(
    std::sregex_token_iterator{begin(str), end(str), re, -1},
    std::sregex_token_iterator{}
);
23
  • 64
    Sadly, boost is not always available for all projects. I'll have to look for a non-boost answer. Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 21:00
  • 45
    Not every project is open to "open source". I work in heavily regulated industries. It's not a problem, really. It's just a fact of life. Boost is not available everywhere. Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 23:19
  • 5
    @NonlinearIdeas The other question / answer wasn’t about Open Source projects at all. The same is true for any project. That said, I of course understand about restricted standards such as MISRA C but then it’s understood that you build everything from scratch anyway (unless you happen to find a compliant library – a rarity). Anyway, the point is hardly that “Boost is not available” – it’s that you have special requirements for which almost any general-purpose answer would be unsuitable. Commented Dec 21, 2013 at 10:46
  • 1
    @NonlinearIdeas Case in point, the other, non-Boost answers are also not MISRA compliant. Commented Dec 21, 2013 at 10:47
  • 4
    @Dmitry What’s “STL barf”?! And the whole community is very much in favour of replacing the C preprocessor — in fact, there are proposals to do that. But your suggestion to use PHP or some other language instead would be a huge step backwards. Commented Sep 11, 2016 at 17:43
150
+50

Another quick way is to use getline. Something like:

std::istringstream iss(str);
std::string s;

while (std::getline(iss, s, ' ')) {
  std::cout << s << std::endl;
}

If you want, you can make a simple split() method returning a std::vector<string>, which is really useful.

6
  • 2
    I had problems using this technique with 0x0A characters in the string which made the while loop exit prematurely. Otherwise, it's a nice simple and quick solution.
    – Ryan H.
    Commented Jan 24, 2011 at 23:00
  • 4
    This is good but just have to keep in mind that by doing this the default delimiter '\n' is not considered. This example will work, but if you are using something like : while(getline(inFile,word,' ')) where inFile is ifstream object containing multiple lines you will get funnny results..
    – hackrock
    Commented Jun 19, 2012 at 21:28
  • it's too bad getline returns the stream rather than the string, making it unusable in initialization lists without temporary storage
    – fuzzyTew
    Commented Aug 3, 2013 at 12:34
  • 1
    Cool! No boost and C++11, good solution to the those legacy projects out there!
    – Deqing
    Commented Apr 30, 2014 at 7:09
  • 1
    THAT is the answer, the name of the function is just a bit awkward.
    – Nils
    Commented Jun 1, 2019 at 21:31
120

Use strtok. In my opinion, there isn't a need to build a class around tokenizing unless strtok doesn't provide you with what you need. It might not, but in 15+ years of writing various parsing code in C and C++, I've always used strtok. Here is an example

char myString[] = "The quick brown fox";
char *p = strtok(myString, " ");
while (p) {
    printf ("Token: %s\n", p);
    p = strtok(NULL, " ");
}

A few caveats (which might not suit your needs). The string is "destroyed" in the process, meaning that EOS characters are placed inline in the delimter spots. Correct usage might require you to make a non-const version of the string. You can also change the list of delimiters mid parse.

In my own opinion, the above code is far simpler and easier to use than writing a separate class for it. To me, this is one of those functions that the language provides and it does it well and cleanly. It's simply a "C based" solution. It's appropriate, it's easy, and you don't have to write a lot of extra code :-)

10
  • 47
    Not that I dislike C, however strtok is not thread-safe, and you need to be certain that the string you send it contains a null character to avoid a possible buffer overflow.
    – tloach
    Commented May 10, 2010 at 13:18
  • 11
    There is strtok_r, but this was a C++ question. Commented Oct 6, 2010 at 9:14
  • 3
    @tloach: in MS C++ compiler strtok is thread safe as the internal static variable is created on the TLS (thread local storage) (actually it is compiler depended)
    – Ahmed
    Commented Nov 28, 2010 at 15:03
  • 5
    @ahmed: thread safe means more than just being able to run the function twice in different threads. In this case if the thread is modified while strtok is running it's possible to have the string be valid during the entire run of strtok, but strtok will still mess up because the string changed, it's now already past the null character, and it's going to keep reading memory until it either gets a security violation or finds a null character. This is a problem with the original C string functions, if you don't specify a length somewhere you run into problems.
    – tloach
    Commented Nov 29, 2010 at 13:23
  • 4
    strtok requires a pointer to a non-const null-terminated char array, which is not a common creature to find in c++ code ... what's your favourite way to convert to this from a std::string?
    – fuzzyTew
    Commented Aug 3, 2013 at 14:43
86

You can use streams, iterators, and the copy algorithm to do this fairly directly.

#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <istream>
#include <ostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <sstream>
#include <algorithm>

int main()
{
  std::string str = "The quick brown fox";

  // construct a stream from the string
  std::stringstream strstr(str);

  // use stream iterators to copy the stream to the vector as whitespace separated strings
  std::istream_iterator<std::string> it(strstr);
  std::istream_iterator<std::string> end;
  std::vector<std::string> results(it, end);

  // send the vector to stdout.
  std::ostream_iterator<std::string> oit(std::cout);
  std::copy(results.begin(), results.end(), oit);
}
12
  • 19
    I find those std:: irritating to read.. why not use "using" ?
    – user35978
    Commented Nov 28, 2008 at 4:19
  • 87
    @Vadi: because editing someone else's post is quite intrusive. @pheze: I prefer to let the std this way I know where my object comes from, that's merely a matter of style. Commented Apr 2, 2010 at 8:49
  • 7
    I understand your reason and I think it's actually a good choice if it works for you, but from a pedagogical standpoint I actually agree with pheze. It's easier to read and understand a completely foreign example like this one with a "using namespace std" at the top because it requires less effort to interpret the following lines... especially in this case because everything is from the standard library. You can make it easy to read and obvious where the objects come from by a series of "using std::string;" etc. Especially since the function is so short. Commented Jul 16, 2010 at 11:27
  • 66
    Despite the "std::" prefixes being irritating or ugly, it's best to include them in example code so that it's completely clear where these functions are coming from. If they bother you, it's trivial to replace them with a "using" after you steal the example and claim it as your own.
    – dlchambers
    Commented Apr 11, 2012 at 14:54
  • 21
    yep! what he said! best practices is to use the std prefix. Any large code base is no doubt going to have it's own libraries and namespaces and using "using namespace std" will give you headaches when you start causing namespace conflicts.
    – Miek
    Commented Jul 18, 2012 at 17:08
79

A solution using regex_token_iterators:

#include <iostream>
#include <regex>
#include <string>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    string str("The quick brown fox");

    regex reg("\\s+");

    sregex_token_iterator iter(str.begin(), str.end(), reg, -1);
    sregex_token_iterator end;

    vector<string> vec(iter, end);

    for (auto a : vec)
    {
        cout << a << endl;
    }
}
6
  • 8
    This should be the top ranked answer. This is the right way to do this in C++ >= 11. Commented Oct 25, 2017 at 16:12
  • 1
    I'm glad I've scrolled all the way down to this answer (currently only had 9 upvotes). This is exactly what a C++11 code should look like for this task!
    – YePhIcK
    Commented Jan 7, 2018 at 17:17
  • Excellent answer that does not rely on external libraries and uses already available libraries
    – Andrew
    Commented Feb 6, 2018 at 20:39
  • 1
    Great answer, giving the most flexibility in delimiters. A few caveats: Using \s+ regex avoids empty tokens in the middle of the text, but does give an empty first token if the text starts with whitespace. Also, regex seems slow: on my laptop, for 20 MB of random text, it takes 0.6 sec, compared to 0.014 sec for strtok, strsep, or Parham's answer using str.find_first_of, or 0.027 sec for Perl, or 0.021 sec for Python. For short text, speed may not be a concern.
    – Mark Gates
    Commented Apr 21, 2018 at 16:29
  • 7
    Ok maybe it looks cool, but this is clearly overuse of regular expressions. Reasonable only if you do not care about performance.
    – Marek R
    Commented Jul 18, 2019 at 12:06
49

No offense folks, but for such a simple problem, you are making things way too complicated. There are a lot of reasons to use Boost. But for something this simple, it's like hitting a fly with a 20# sledge.

void
split( vector<string> & theStringVector,  /* Altered/returned value */
       const  string  & theString,
       const  string  & theDelimiter)
{
    UASSERT( theDelimiter.size(), >, 0); // My own ASSERT macro.

    size_t  start = 0, end = 0;

    while ( end != string::npos)
    {
        end = theString.find( theDelimiter, start);

        // If at end, use length=maxLength.  Else use length=end-start.
        theStringVector.push_back( theString.substr( start,
                       (end == string::npos) ? string::npos : end - start));

        // If at end, use start=maxSize.  Else use start=end+delimiter.
        start = (   ( end > (string::npos - theDelimiter.size()) )
                  ?  string::npos  :  end + theDelimiter.size());
    }
}

For example (for Doug's case),

#define SHOW(I,X)   cout << "[" << (I) << "]\t " # X " = \"" << (X) << "\"" << endl

int
main()
{
    vector<string> v;

    split( v, "A:PEP:909:Inventory Item", ":" );

    for (unsigned int i = 0;  i < v.size();   i++)
        SHOW( i, v[i] );
}

And yes, we could have split() return a new vector rather than passing one in. It's trivial to wrap and overload. But depending on what I'm doing, I often find it better to re-use pre-existing objects rather than always creating new ones. (Just as long as I don't forget to empty the vector in between!)

Reference: http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/string/string/.

(I was originally writing a response to Doug's question: C++ Strings Modifying and Extracting based on Separators (closed). But since Martin York closed that question with a pointer over here... I'll just generalize my code.)

6
  • 12
    Why define a macro you only use in one place. And how is your UASSERT any better than standard assert. Splitting up the comparison into 3 tokens like that does nothing other than require more commas than you'd otherwise need.
    – crelbor
    Commented May 13, 2011 at 13:10
  • 1
    Maybe the UASSERT macro shows (in the error message) the actual relationship between (and values of) the two compared values? That's actually a pretty good idea, IMHO.
    – GhassanPL
    Commented Mar 17, 2012 at 17:03
  • 12
    Ugh, why doesn't the std::string class include a split() function? Commented Apr 18, 2012 at 20:34
  • I think the last line in the while loop should be start = ((end > (theString.size() - theDelimiter.size())) ? string::npos : end + theDelimiter.size()); and the while loop should be while (start != string::npos). Also, I check the substring to be sure it's not empty before inserting it into the vector.
    – John K
    Commented Jul 31, 2012 at 20:11
  • @JohnK If the input has two consecutive delimiters, then clearly the string between them is empty, and should be inserted into the vector. If empty values are not acceptable for a particular purpose, that is another thing, but IMHO such constraints should be enforced outside this kind of a very general purpose functions. Commented Jun 26, 2013 at 14:02
39

Boost has a strong split function: boost::algorithm::split.

Sample program:

#include <vector>
#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>

int main() {
    auto s = "a,b, c ,,e,f,";
    std::vector<std::string> fields;
    boost::split(fields, s, boost::is_any_of(","));
    for (const auto& field : fields)
        std::cout << "\"" << field << "\"\n";
    return 0;
}

Output:

"a"
"b"
" c "
""
"e"
"f"
""
29

This is a simple STL-only solution (~5 lines!) using std::find and std::find_first_not_of that handles repetitions of the delimiter (like spaces or periods for instance), as well leading and trailing delimiters:

#include <string>
#include <vector>

void tokenize(std::string str, std::vector<string> &token_v){
    size_t start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER), end=start;

    while (start != std::string::npos){
        // Find next occurence of delimiter
        end = str.find(DELIMITER, start);
        // Push back the token found into vector
        token_v.push_back(str.substr(start, end-start));
        // Skip all occurences of the delimiter to find new start
        start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER, end);
    }
}

Try it out live!

5
  • 4
    This is a good one but I think you need to use find_first_of() instead of find() for this to work properly with multiple delimiters.
    – user755921
    Commented Nov 27, 2015 at 19:28
  • 2
    @user755921 multiple delimiters are skipped when finding the start position with find_first_not_of.
    – Beginner
    Commented Oct 5, 2018 at 12:38
  • I voted "Up" for Parham's solution and modified it a bit: std::vector<string> tokenize(const std::string& str, const string& delimiters) { std::vector<string> result; size_t start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER), end = start; while (start != std::string::npos) { // Find next occurrence of delimiter end = str.find(DELIMITER, start); // Push back the token found into vector result.push_back(str.substr(start, end - start)); // Skip all occurrences of the delimiter to find new start start = str.find_first_not_of(DELIMITER, end); } return result; } Commented Aug 10, 2021 at 5:50
  • Replaced "DELIMITER" with "delimiters": std::vector<string> tokenize(const std::string& str, const string& delimiters) { std::vector<string> result; size_t start = str.find_first_not_of(delimiters), end = start; while (start != std::string::npos) { // Find next occurrence of delimiter end = str.find(delimiters, start); // Push back the token found into vector result.push_back(str.substr(start, end - start)); // Skip all occurrences of the delimiter to find new start start = str.find_first_not_of(delimiters, end); } return result; } Commented Aug 10, 2021 at 5:57
  • @Parham, sadly this also seems to skip empty fields, such as: ` a,b,c,,,f,g` Which returns a b c f g as the 5 members of the vector instead of including the empty strings. Indexed content suffers. :( It is pretty common in things such as NMEA GPS sentences to have multiple empty fields in it's indexed, character separated string data. Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 18:08
28

I know you asked for a C++ solution, but you might consider this helpful:

Qt

#include <QString>

...

QString str = "The quick brown fox"; 
QStringList results = str.split(" "); 

The advantage over Boost in this example is that it's a direct one to one mapping to your post's code.

See more at Qt documentation

23

Here is a sample tokenizer class that might do what you want

//Header file
class Tokenizer 
{
    public:
        static const std::string DELIMITERS;
        Tokenizer(const std::string& str);
        Tokenizer(const std::string& str, const std::string& delimiters);
        bool NextToken();
        bool NextToken(const std::string& delimiters);
        const std::string GetToken() const;
        void Reset();
    protected:
        size_t m_offset;
        const std::string m_string;
        std::string m_token;
        std::string m_delimiters;
};

//CPP file
const std::string Tokenizer::DELIMITERS(" \t\n\r");

Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s) :
    m_string(s), 
    m_offset(0), 
    m_delimiters(DELIMITERS) {}

Tokenizer::Tokenizer(const std::string& s, const std::string& delimiters) :
    m_string(s), 
    m_offset(0), 
    m_delimiters(delimiters) {}

bool Tokenizer::NextToken() 
{
    return NextToken(m_delimiters);
}

bool Tokenizer::NextToken(const std::string& delimiters) 
{
    size_t i = m_string.find_first_not_of(delimiters, m_offset);
    if (std::string::npos == i) 
    {
        m_offset = m_string.length();
        return false;
    }

    size_t j = m_string.find_first_of(delimiters, i);
    if (std::string::npos == j) 
    {
        m_token = m_string.substr(i);
        m_offset = m_string.length();
        return true;
    }

    m_token = m_string.substr(i, j - i);
    m_offset = j;
    return true;
}

Example:

std::vector <std::string> v;
Tokenizer s("split this string", " ");
while (s.NextToken())
{
    v.push_back(s.GetToken());
}
15

pystring is a small library which implements a bunch of Python's string functions, including the split method:

#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include "pystring.h"

std::vector<std::string> chunks;
pystring::split("this string", chunks);

// also can specify a separator
pystring::split("this-string", chunks, "-");
2
  • 3
    Wow, you have answered my immediate question and many future questions. I get that c++ is powerful. But when splitting a string results in source code like the above answers, it is plainly disheartening. I would love to know of other libraries like this that pull higher level langauges conveniences down.
    – Ross
    Commented Jun 14, 2012 at 22:55
  • wow, you seriously just made my day!! did not know about pystring. this is going to save me a lot of time!
    – accraze
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 17:14
11

If you're using C++ ranges - the full ranges-v3 library, not the limited functionality accepted into C++20 - you could do it this way:

auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1);

... and this is lazily-evaluated. You can alternatively set a vector to this range:

auto results = str | ranges::views::tokenize(" ",1) | ranges::to<std::vector>();

this will take O(m) space and O(n) time if str has n characters making up m words.

See also the library's own tokenization example, here.

9

Adam Pierce's answer provides an hand-spun tokenizer taking in a const char*. It's a bit more problematic to do with iterators because incrementing a string's end iterator is undefined. That said, given string str{ "The quick brown fox" } we can certainly accomplish this:

auto start = find(cbegin(str), cend(str), ' ');
vector<string> tokens{ string(cbegin(str), start) };

while (start != cend(str)) {
    const auto finish = find(++start, cend(str), ' ');

    tokens.push_back(string(start, finish));
    start = finish;
}

Live Example


If you're looking to abstract complexity by using standard functionality, as On Freund suggests strtok is a simple option:

vector<string> tokens;

for (auto i = strtok(data(str), " "); i != nullptr; i = strtok(nullptr, " ")) tokens.push_back(i);

If you don't have access to C++17 you'll need to substitute data(str) as in this example: http://ideone.com/8kAGoa

Though not demonstrated in the example, strtok need not use the same delimiter for each token. Along with this advantage though, there are several drawbacks:

  1. strtok cannot be used on multiple strings at the same time: Either a nullptr must be passed to continue tokenizing the current string or a new char* to tokenize must be passed (there are some non-standard implementations which do support this however, such as: strtok_s)
  2. For the same reason strtok cannot be used on multiple threads simultaneously (this may however be implementation defined, for example: Visual Studio's implementation is thread safe)
  3. Calling strtok modifies the string it is operating on, so it cannot be used on const strings, const char*s, or literal strings, to tokenize any of these with strtok or to operate on a string who's contents need to be preserved, str would have to be copied, then the copy could be operated on

provides us with split_view to tokenize strings, in a non-destructive manner: https://topanswers.xyz/cplusplus?q=749#a874


The previous methods cannot generate a tokenized vector in-place, meaning without abstracting them into a helper function they cannot initialize const vector<string> tokens. That functionality and the ability to accept any white-space delimiter can be harnessed using an istream_iterator. For example given: const string str{ "The quick \tbrown \nfox" } we can do this:

istringstream is{ str };
const vector<string> tokens{ istream_iterator<string>(is), istream_iterator<string>() };

Live Example

The required construction of an istringstream for this option has far greater cost than the previous 2 options, however this cost is typically hidden in the expense of string allocation.


If none of the above options are flexable enough for your tokenization needs, the most flexible option is using a regex_token_iterator of course with this flexibility comes greater expense, but again this is likely hidden in the string allocation cost. Say for example we want to tokenize based on non-escaped commas, also eating white-space, given the following input: const string str{ "The ,qu\\,ick ,\tbrown, fox" } we can do this:

const regex re{ "\\s*((?:[^\\\\,]|\\\\.)*?)\\s*(?:,|$)" };
const vector<string> tokens{ sregex_token_iterator(cbegin(str), cend(str), re, 1), sregex_token_iterator() };

Live Example

4
  • strtok_s is C11 standard, by the way. strtok_r is a POSIX2001 standard. Between both of those, there's a standard re-entrant version of strtok for most platforms. Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 9:43
  • 1
    @AndonM.Coleman But this is a c++ question, and in C++ #include <cstring> only includes the c99 version of strtok. So my assumption is that you're just providing this comment as supporting material, demonstrating the implementation specific availability of strtok extensions? Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 12:10
  • 1
    Merely that it's not as non-standard as people might otherwise believe. strtok_s is provided by both C11 and as a standalone extension in Microsoft's C runtime. There's a curious bit of history here where Microsoft's _s functions became the C standard. Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 13:48
  • @AndonM.Coleman Right, I'm with you. Obviously if it's in the C11 standard the interface and implementation have constraints placed upon them which require identical behavior independent of platform. Now the only problem is ensuring that the C11 function is available to us across platforms. Hopefully the C11 standard will be something that C++17 or C++20 chooses to pickup. Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 14:13
8

I posted this answer for similar question.
Don't reinvent the wheel. I've used a number of libraries and the fastest and most flexible I have come across is: C++ String Toolkit Library.

Here is an example of how to use it that I've posted else where on the stackoverflow.

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <strtk.hpp>

const char *whitespace  = " \t\r\n\f";
const char *whitespace_and_punctuation  = " \t\r\n\f;,=";

int main()
{
    {   // normal parsing of a string into a vector of strings
       std::string s("Somewhere down the road");
       std::vector<std::string> result;
       if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace, result ) )
       {
           for(size_t i = 0; i < result.size(); ++i )
            std::cout << result[i] << std::endl;
       }
    }

    {  // parsing a string into a vector of floats with other separators
       // besides spaces

       std::string s("3.0, 3.14; 4.0");
       std::vector<float> values;
       if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, values ) )
       {
           for(size_t i = 0; i < values.size(); ++i )
            std::cout << values[i] << std::endl;
       }
    }

    {  // parsing a string into specific variables

       std::string s("angle = 45; radius = 9.9");
       std::string w1, w2;
       float v1, v2;
       if( strtk::parse( s, whitespace_and_punctuation, w1, v1, w2, v2) )
       {
           std::cout << "word " << w1 << ", value " << v1 << std::endl;
           std::cout << "word " << w2 << ", value " << v2 << std::endl;
       }
    }

    return 0;
}
7

Check this example. It might help you..

#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>

using namespace std;

int main ()
{
    string tmps;
    istringstream is ("the dellimiter is the space");
    while (is.good ()) {
        is >> tmps;
        cout << tmps << "\n";
    }
    return 0;
}
1
  • 1
    I would do while ( is >> tmps ) { std::cout << tmps << "\n"; }
    – jordix
    Commented Apr 5, 2016 at 14:46
6

MFC/ATL has a very nice tokenizer. From MSDN:

CAtlString str( "%First Second#Third" );
CAtlString resToken;
int curPos= 0;

resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
while (resToken != "")
{
   printf("Resulting token: %s\n", resToken);
   resToken= str.Tokenize("% #",curPos);
};

Output

Resulting Token: First
Resulting Token: Second
Resulting Token: Third
1
  • 1
    This Tokenize() function will skip empty tokens, for example, if there is substring "%%" in main string, there is no empty token returned. It is skipped.
    – Sheen
    Commented Jan 20, 2011 at 16:49
4

If you're willing to use C, you can use the strtok function. You should pay attention to multi-threading issues when using it.

3
  • 3
    Note that strtok modifes the string you're checking, so you can't use it on const char * strings without making a copy. Commented Sep 10, 2008 at 13:53
  • 9
    The multithreading issue is that strtok uses a global variable to keep track of where it is, so if you have two threads that each use strtok, you'll get undefined behavior.
    – JohnMcG
    Commented Sep 10, 2008 at 15:09
  • @JohnMcG Or just use strtok_s which is basically strtok with explicit state passing.
    – Matthias
    Commented Jun 2, 2018 at 16:51
4

For simple stuff I just use the following:

unsigned TokenizeString(const std::string& i_source,
                        const std::string& i_seperators,
                        bool i_discard_empty_tokens,
                        std::vector<std::string>& o_tokens)
{
    unsigned prev_pos = 0;
    unsigned pos = 0;
    unsigned number_of_tokens = 0;
    o_tokens.clear();
    pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
    while (pos != std::string::npos)
    {
        std::string token = i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos);
        if (!i_discard_empty_tokens || token != "")
        {
            o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos, pos - prev_pos));
            number_of_tokens++;
        }

        pos++;
        prev_pos = pos;
        pos = i_source.find_first_of(i_seperators, pos);
    }

    if (prev_pos < i_source.length())
    {
        o_tokens.push_back(i_source.substr(prev_pos));
        number_of_tokens++;
    }

    return number_of_tokens;
}

Cowardly disclaimer: I write real-time data processing software where the data comes in through binary files, sockets, or some API call (I/O cards, camera's). I never use this function for something more complicated or time-critical than reading external configuration files on startup.

4

You can simply use a regular expression library and solve that using regular expressions.

Use expression (\w+) and the variable in \1 (or $1 depending on the library implementation of regular expressions).

2
  • +1 for suggesting regex, if you don't need warp speed it is the most flexible solution, not yet supported everywhere but as time goes by that will become less important. Commented Jul 27, 2014 at 19:57
  • +1 from me, just tried <regex> in c++11. So simple and elegant
    – Sergio
    Commented Nov 6, 2014 at 16:30
4

Many overly complicated suggestions here. Try this simple std::string solution:

using namespace std;

string someText = ...

string::size_type tokenOff = 0, sepOff = tokenOff;
while (sepOff != string::npos)
{
    sepOff = someText.find(' ', sepOff);
    string::size_type tokenLen = (sepOff == string::npos) ? sepOff : sepOff++ - tokenOff;
    string token = someText.substr(tokenOff, tokenLen);
    if (!token.empty())
        /* do something with token */;
    tokenOff = sepOff;
}
3

I thought that was what the >> operator on string streams was for:

string word; sin >> word;
1
  • 1
    My fault for giving a bad (too simple) example. A far as I know, that only works when your delimiter is whitespace. Commented Nov 25, 2008 at 18:24
3

I know this question is already answered but I want to contribute. Maybe my solution is a bit simple but this is what I came up with:

vector<string> get_words(string const& text, string const& separator)
{
    vector<string> result;
    string tmp = text;

    size_t first_pos = 0;
    size_t second_pos = tmp.find(separator);

    while (second_pos != string::npos)
    {
        if (first_pos != second_pos)
        {
            string word = tmp.substr(first_pos, second_pos - first_pos);
            result.push_back(word);
        }
        tmp = tmp.substr(second_pos + separator.length());
        second_pos = tmp.find(separator);
    }

    result.push_back(tmp);

    return result;
}

Please comment if there is a better approach to something in my code or if something is wrong.

UPDATE: added generic separator

2
  • Used your solution from the crowd :) Can I modify your code to add any separator?
    – Zac
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 17:32
  • 1
    @Zac glad you liked it and ofc you can modify it... just add an bolded update section to my answer...
    – NutCracker
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 20:52
2

Here's an approach that allows you control over whether empty tokens are included (like strsep) or excluded (like strtok).

#include <string.h> // for strchr and strlen

/*
 * want_empty_tokens==true  : include empty tokens, like strsep()
 * want_empty_tokens==false : exclude empty tokens, like strtok()
 */
std::vector<std::string> tokenize(const char* src,
                                  char delim,
                                  bool want_empty_tokens)
{
  std::vector<std::string> tokens;

  if (src and *src != '\0') // defensive
    while( true )  {
      const char* d = strchr(src, delim);
      size_t len = (d)? d-src : strlen(src);

      if (len or want_empty_tokens)
        tokens.push_back( std::string(src, len) ); // capture token

      if (d) src += len+1; else break;
    }

  return tokens;
}
2

Seems odd to me that with all us speed conscious nerds here on SO no one has presented a version that uses a compile time generated look up table for the delimiter (example implementation further down). Using a look up table and iterators should beat std::regex in efficiency, if you don't need to beat regex, just use it, its standard as of C++11 and super flexible.

Some have suggested regex already but for the noobs here is a packaged example that should do exactly what the OP expects:

std::vector<std::string> split(std::string::const_iterator it, std::string::const_iterator end, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){
    std::smatch m{};
    std::vector<std::string> ret{};
    while (std::regex_search (it,end,m,e)) {
        ret.emplace_back(m.str());              
        std::advance(it, m.position() + m.length()); //next start position = match position + match length
    }
    return ret;
}
std::vector<std::string> split(const std::string &s, std::regex e = std::regex{"\\w+"}){  //comfort version calls flexible version
    return split(s.cbegin(), s.cend(), std::move(e));
}
int main ()
{
    std::string str {"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
    auto v = split(str);
    for(const auto&s:v){
        std::cout << s << std::endl;
    }
    std::cout << "crazy version:" << std::endl;
    v = split(str, std::regex{"[^e]+"});  //using e as delim shows flexibility
    for(const auto&s:v){
        std::cout << s << std::endl;
    }
    return 0;
}

If we need to be faster and accept the constraint that all chars must be 8 bits we can make a look up table at compile time using metaprogramming:

template<bool...> struct BoolSequence{};        //just here to hold bools
template<char...> struct CharSequence{};        //just here to hold chars
template<typename T, char C> struct Contains;   //generic
template<char First, char... Cs, char Match>    //not first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,Match> :
    Contains<CharSequence<Cs...>, Match>{};     //strip first and increase index
template<char First, char... Cs>                //is first specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<First, Cs...>,First>: std::true_type {}; 
template<char Match>                            //not found specialization
struct Contains<CharSequence<>,Match>: std::false_type{};

template<int I, typename T, typename U> 
struct MakeSequence;                            //generic
template<int I, bool... Bs, typename U> 
struct MakeSequence<I,BoolSequence<Bs...>, U>:  //not last
    MakeSequence<I-1, BoolSequence<Contains<U,I-1>::value,Bs...>, U>{};
template<bool... Bs, typename U> 
struct MakeSequence<0,BoolSequence<Bs...>,U>{   //last  
    using Type = BoolSequence<Bs...>;
};
template<typename T> struct BoolASCIITable;
template<bool... Bs> struct BoolASCIITable<BoolSequence<Bs...>>{
    /* could be made constexpr but not yet supported by MSVC */
    static bool isDelim(const char c){
        static const bool table[256] = {Bs...};
        return table[static_cast<int>(c)];
    }   
};
using Delims = CharSequence<'.',',',' ',':','\n'>;  //list your custom delimiters here
using Table = BoolASCIITable<typename MakeSequence<256,BoolSequence<>,Delims>::Type>;

With that in place making a getNextToken function is easy:

template<typename T_It>
std::pair<T_It,T_It> getNextToken(T_It begin,T_It end){
    begin = std::find_if(begin,end,std::not1(Table{})); //find first non delim or end
    auto second = std::find_if(begin,end,Table{});      //find first delim or end
    return std::make_pair(begin,second);
}

Using it is also easy:

int main() {
    std::string s{"Some people, excluding those present, have been compile time constants - since puberty."};
    auto it = std::begin(s);
    auto end = std::end(s);
    while(it != std::end(s)){
        auto token = getNextToken(it,end);
        std::cout << std::string(token.first,token.second) << std::endl;
        it = token.second;
    }
    return 0;
}

Here is a live example: http://ideone.com/GKtkLQ

2
  • 1
    Is it possible to tokennize with an String delimiter ?
    – Galigator
    Commented Jul 26, 2014 at 13:51
  • this version is only optimized for single character delimiters, using a look up table is not suited for multi character (string) delimiters so its harder to beat regex in efficiency. Commented Jul 27, 2014 at 13:50
1

you can take advantage of boost::make_find_iterator. Something similar to this:

template<typename CH>
inline vector< basic_string<CH> > tokenize(
    const basic_string<CH> &Input,
    const basic_string<CH> &Delimiter,
    bool remove_empty_token
    ) {

    typedef typename basic_string<CH>::const_iterator string_iterator_t;
    typedef boost::find_iterator< string_iterator_t > string_find_iterator_t;

    vector< basic_string<CH> > Result;
    string_iterator_t it = Input.begin();
    string_iterator_t it_end = Input.end();
    for(string_find_iterator_t i = boost::make_find_iterator(Input, boost::first_finder(Delimiter, boost::is_equal()));
        i != string_find_iterator_t();
        ++i) {
        if(remove_empty_token){
            if(it != i->begin())
                Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
        }
        else
            Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,i->begin()));
        it = i->end();
    }
    if(it != it_end)
        Result.push_back(basic_string<CH>(it,it_end));

    return Result;
}
0
1

Here's my Swiss® Army Knife of string-tokenizers for splitting up strings by whitespace, accounting for single and double-quote wrapped strings as well as stripping those characters from the results. I used RegexBuddy 4.x to generate most of the code-snippet, but I added custom handling for stripping quotes and a few other things.

#include <string>
#include <locale>
#include <regex>

std::vector<std::wstring> tokenize_string(std::wstring string_to_tokenize) {
    std::vector<std::wstring> tokens;

    std::wregex re(LR"(("[^"]*"|'[^']*'|[^"' ]+))", std::regex_constants::collate);

    std::wsregex_iterator next( string_to_tokenize.begin(),
                                string_to_tokenize.end(),
                                re,
                                std::regex_constants::match_not_null );

    std::wsregex_iterator end;
    const wchar_t single_quote = L'\'';
    const wchar_t double_quote = L'\"';
    while ( next != end ) {
        std::wsmatch match = *next;
        const std::wstring token = match.str( 0 );
        next++;

        if (token.length() > 2 && (token.front() == double_quote || token.front() == single_quote))
            tokens.emplace_back( std::wstring(token.begin()+1, token.begin()+token.length()-1) );
        else
            tokens.emplace_back(token);
    }
    return tokens;
}
3
  • 1
    (Down)votes can be just as constructive as upvotes, but not when you don't leave comments as to why... Commented Aug 9, 2019 at 20:55
  • 1
    I evened you out but it might be because the code looks pretty daunting to the programmer googling 'how to split a string' especially without documentation
    – mattshu
    Commented Jan 12, 2020 at 14:05
  • Thanks @mattshu! Is it the regex segments that make it daunting or something else? Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 20:50
1

I wrote a simplified version (and maybe a little bit efficient) of https://stackoverflow.com/a/50247503/3976739 for my own use. I hope it would help.

void StrTokenizer(string& source, const char* delimiter, vector<string>& Tokens)
{   
   size_t new_index = 0;
   size_t old_index = 0;

   while (new_index != std::string::npos)   
   {
      new_index = source.find(delimiter, old_index);
      Tokens.emplace_back(source.substr(old_index, new_index-old_index));

      if (new_index != std::string::npos)
          old_index = ++new_index;
   }
}
1
  • 1
    I was just about to add the same code as another answer! This keeps the empty fields in delimited text, which is VERY useful for pre-indexed character data such as NMEA strings from a GPS receiver. Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 18:52
1

I just read all the answers and can't find solution with next preconditions:

  1. no dynamic memory allocations
  2. no use of boost
  3. no use of regex
  4. c++17 standard only

So here is my solution

#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <string_view>
#include <utility>

struct split_by_spaces
{
    std::string_view      text;
    static constexpr char delim = ' ';

    struct iterator
    {
        const std::string_view& text;
        std::size_t             cur_pos;
        std::size_t             end_pos;

        std::string_view operator*() const
        {
            return { &text[cur_pos], end_pos - cur_pos };
        }
        bool operator==(const iterator& other) const
        {
            return cur_pos == other.cur_pos && end_pos == other.end_pos;
        }
        bool operator!=(const iterator& other) const
        {
            return !(*this == other);
        }
        iterator& operator++()
        {
            cur_pos = text.find_first_not_of(delim, end_pos);

            if (cur_pos == std::string_view::npos)
            {
                cur_pos = text.size();
                end_pos = cur_pos;
                return *this;
            }

            end_pos = text.find(delim, cur_pos);

            if (end_pos == std::string_view::npos)
            {
                end_pos = text.size();
            }

            return *this;
        }
    };

    [[nodiscard]] iterator begin() const
    {
        auto start = text.find_first_not_of(delim);
        if (start == std::string_view::npos)
        {
            return iterator{ text, text.size(), text.size() };
        }
        auto end_word = text.find(delim, start);
        if (end_word == std::string_view::npos)
        {
            end_word = text.size();
        }
        return iterator{ text, start, end_word };
    }
    [[nodiscard]] iterator end() const
    {
        return iterator{ text, text.size(), text.size() };
    }
};

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    using namespace std::literals;
    auto str = " there should be no memory allocation during parsing"
               "  into words this line and you   should'n create any"
               "  contaner                  for intermediate words  "sv;

    auto comma = "";
    for (std::string_view word : split_by_spaces{ str })
    {
        std::cout << std::exchange(comma, ",") << std::quoted(word);
    }

    auto only_spaces = "                   "sv;
    for (std::string_view word : split_by_spaces{ only_spaces })
    {
        std::cout << "you will not see this line in output" << std::endl;
    }
}
1
  • 1
    in operator ++, the second ``` if (cur_pos == std::string_view::npos)``` should be if (end_pos == ...) Commented Dec 27, 2023 at 16:39

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