strtok, wcstok, _mbstok

Find the next token in a string.

char *strtok(
   char *strToken,
   const char *strDelimit 
);
wchar_t *wcstok(
   wchar_t *strToken,
   const wchar_t *strDelimit 
);
unsigned char *_mbstok(
   unsigned char*strToken,
   const unsigned char *strDelimit 
);

Parameters

strToken

String containing token or tokens.

strDelimit

Set of delimiter characters.

Return Value

Returns a pointer to the next token found in strToken. They return NULL when no more tokens are found. Each call modifies strToken by substituting a NULL character for each delimiter that is encountered.

Remarks

The strtok function finds the next token in strToken. The set of characters in strDelimit specifies possible delimiters of the token to be found in strToken on the current call. wcstok and _mbstok are wide-character and multibyte-character versions of strtok. The arguments and return value of wcstok are wide-character strings; those of _mbstok are multibyte-character strings. These three functions behave identically otherwise.

Security Note    These functions incur a potential threat brought about by a buffer overrun problem. Buffer overrun problems are a frequent method of system attack, resulting in an unwarranted elevation of privilege. For more information, see Avoiding Buffer Overruns.

Generic-Text Routine Mappings

On the first call to strtok, the function skips leading delimiters and returns a pointer to the first token in strToken, terminating the token with a null character. More tokens can be broken out of the remainder of strToken by a series of calls to strtok. Each call to strtok modifies strToken by inserting a null character after the token returned by that call. To read the next token from strToken, call strtok with a NULL value for the strToken argument. The NULL strToken argument causes strtok to search for the next token in the modified strToken. The strDelimit argument can take any value from one call to the next so that the set of delimiters may vary.

Note   Each function uses a static variable for parsing the string into tokens. If multiple or simultaneous calls are made to the same function, a high potential for data corruption and inaccurate results exists. Therefore, do not attempt to call the same function simultaneously for different strings and be aware of calling one of these functions from within a loop where another routine may be called that uses the same function. However, calling this function simultaneously from multiple threads does not have undesirable effects.

Requirements

For additional compatibility information, see Compatibility in the Introduction.

Libraries

All versions of the C run-time libraries.

Example

// crt_strtok.c
/* In this program, a loop uses strtok
 * to print all the tokens (separated by commas
 * or blanks) in the string named "string".
 */

#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>

char string[] = "A string\tof ,,tokens\nand some  more tokens";
char seps[]   = " ,\t\n";
char *token;

int main( void )
{
   printf( "Tokens:\n" );
   /* Establish string and get the first token: */
   token = strtok( string, seps );
   while( token != NULL )
   {
      /* While there are tokens in "string" */
      printf( " %s\n", token );
      /* Get next token: */
      token = strtok( NULL, seps );
   }
}

Output

Tokens:
 A
 string
 of
 tokens
 and
 some
 more
 tokens

See Also

String Manipulation Routines | strcspn | strspn | setlocale | Run-Time Routines and .NET Framework Equivalents