Re: convert this code

[boldt@xxxxxxxxxx]

From: "Jon Paris" <Jon.Paris@Partner400.com>
To: <rpg400-l@midrange.com>
Cc: "Hans Boldt" <boldt@ca.ibm.com>
Subject: convert this code
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 10:33:11 -0400
Reply-To: rpg400-l@midrange.com

Jon wrote:
> >> The best way to avoid problems is to just use the C run-time
> >>function strtok_r() instead.

>Thanks Hans - I hadn't seen that one - is it actually documented
> anywhere?
>
>On a related topic, do you know the name of the strtok like
>function that _doesn't_ ignore consecutive delimiters?  strtok is
>useless for parsing comma delimited files because of this.

Hi Jon!  Well, I wasn't the first person on that thread to
mention strtok_r().  I really haven't found any really good
documentation for strtok_r().  A Google search for "strtok_r
manpage" turned up a couple of results, but they were
primarily for strtok().  They don't really discuss how big
to make the user-allocated buffer.  I would assume at least
as big as the first string argument.

Regarding strtok() ignoring consecutive delimiters:  Yikes,
you're right!  Even Python's string.split() method splits
properly!  I have no easy answers for that, but if you
really want to use strtok(), it would appear that you have
to replace all occurrances of ',,' in your strings with
', ,'.

But in general, you really wouldn't want to use strtok() for
CSV records anyways since strtok() doesn't handle CSV fields
delimited by quotes.  strtok(',') splits on commas whether
or not the field is quoted.

Cheers!  Hans

Hans Boldt, ILE RPG Development, IBM Toronto Lab, boldt@ca.ibm.com