oh the pain, the pain of c

bobthebat · 07-04-2002, 01:48 AM

I need to translate this simple perl line into C:
@array = split(/:/, $string);
I know I'm going to need to use strtok, but my problem is that I don't know how big array has to be until I tokenize string, so I can't declare array because I don't know what size to make it. Do I have to parse it twice to find the number of tokens first and to store them second? This seems really inelegant, and I'm sure there's a better way. Can anybody help?
Thanks,
btb

Mik · 07-04-2002, 06:09 AM

Well your options would be to:

* make an array which is always large enough
* count how many you would need first (probably would need to parse twice)
* use an array which can dynamically resize itself (if you are using c you will have to build your own implementation of that)

biosx · 07-04-2002, 11:30 AM

I'm sure you can get creative with the malloc() and realloc() functions. Check them out. I say you break it down like this:

1. malloc() out some memory enough to hold a good amount of data.

2. Create a function that walks through the string and counts the number of words found (excluding the colon-delimiters).

3. Then take that and check if you have to allocate more space.

4. If you need more space, do a realloc() and proceed with your tokenizing.

Good luck