Re: strtok and consecutive delimiters

[Scott Klement <klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Wayne Achenbaum wrote:
>
> Hello all, I have a procedure in a service pgm that uses the strtok
> function. I am trying to figure out how to handle consecutive delimiters. I
> attended a session with Jon Paris  that had a handout the Power of
> Prototyping. In the session we talked about using the function. I remember
> him saying with slight modification the code could handle consecutive
> delimiters. Does anyone know how handle the multiple delimiter issue??
>


Unfortunately, the strtok() function has no way of detecting "empty
fields" (i.e. places where there are two consecutive delimiters).  I think
that's what you're asking.

In FreeBSD and other Unixes, strtok() has been deprecated in favor of
strsep() for this very reason.   here's a quote from the FreeBSD manual
page for strsep():


   HISTORY
     The strsep() function is intended as a replacement for the strtok()
     function.  While the strtok() function should be preferred for
     portability reasons (it conforms to ISO/IEC 9899:1990 (``ISO C89''))
     it is unable to handle empty fields, i.e. detect fields delimited by
     two adjacent delimiter characters, or to be used for more than a single
     string at a time. The strsep() function first appeared in 4.4BSD.


My opinion is that functions like strtok and strsep don't save a lot of
work.  It's just as easy to write your own routine that copies characters
until it finds a delimiter -- and that way you can make it easier to use
from RPG.