How do I tokenize a string in C++?

Question

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++?

Answer 1

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{}
);

Answer 2

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;
    }
}

Answer 3

Here's a real simple one:

#include <vector>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

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

    do
    {
        const char *begin = str;

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

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

    return result;
}

Answer 4

Another quick way is to use getline. Something like:

stringstream ss("bla bla");
string s;

while (getline(ss, s, ' ')) {
 cout << s << endl;
}

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

Answer 5

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 :-)

Answer 6

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);
}

Answer 7

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;
    }
}

Answer 8

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.)

Answer 9

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"
""

Answer 10

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

Answer 11

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!

Answer 12

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());
}

Answer 13

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, "-");

Answer 14

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;
}

Answer 15

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;
}

Answer 16

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

---

c++20 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

Answer 17

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

Answer 18

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

Answer 19

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.

Answer 20

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).

Answer 21

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;
}

Answer 22

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

string word; sin >> word;

Answer 23

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;
}

Answer 24

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

Answer 25

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

Answer 26

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, i.e. O(1) time and space. 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.

Answer 27

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;
}

Answer 28

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;
}

Answer 29

If the maximum length of the input string to be tokenized is known, one can exploit this and implement a very fast version. I am sketching the basic idea below, which was inspired by both strtok() and the "suffix array"-data structure described Jon Bentley's "Programming Perls" 2nd edition, chapter 15. The C++ class in this case only gives some organization and convenience of use. The implementation shown can be easily extended for removing leading and trailing whitespace characters in the tokens.

Basically one can replace the separator characters with string-terminating '\0'-characters and set pointers to the tokens withing the modified string. In the extreme case when the string consists only of separators, one gets string-length plus 1 resulting empty tokens. It is practical to duplicate the string to be modified.

Header file:

class TextLineSplitter
{
public:

    TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len );

    ~TextLineSplitter();

    void            SplitLine( const char *line,
                               const char sep_char = ',',
                             );

    inline size_t   NumTokens( void ) const
    {
        return mNumTokens;
    }

    const char *    GetToken( const size_t token_idx ) const
    {
        assert( token_idx < mNumTokens );
        return mTokens[ token_idx ];
    }

private:
    const size_t    mStorageSize;

    char           *mBuff;
    char          **mTokens;
    size_t          mNumTokens;

    inline void     ResetContent( void )
    {
        memset( mBuff, 0, mStorageSize );
        // mark all items as empty:
        memset( mTokens, 0, mStorageSize * sizeof( char* ) );
        // reset counter for found items:
        mNumTokens = 0L;
    }
};

Implementattion file:

TextLineSplitter::TextLineSplitter( const size_t max_line_len ):
    mStorageSize ( max_line_len + 1L )
{
    // allocate memory
    mBuff   = new char  [ mStorageSize ];
    mTokens = new char* [ mStorageSize ];

    ResetContent();
}

TextLineSplitter::~TextLineSplitter()
{
    delete [] mBuff;
    delete [] mTokens;
}


void TextLineSplitter::SplitLine( const char *line,
                                  const char sep_char   /* = ',' */,
                                )
{
    assert( sep_char != '\0' );

    ResetContent();
    strncpy( mBuff, line, mMaxLineLen );

    size_t idx       = 0L; // running index for characters

    do
    {
        assert( idx < mStorageSize );

        const char chr = line[ idx ]; // retrieve current character

        if( mTokens[ mNumTokens ] == NULL )
        {
            mTokens[ mNumTokens ] = &mBuff[ idx ];
        } // if

        if( chr == sep_char || chr == '\0' )
        { // item or line finished
            // overwrite separator with a 0-terminating character:
            mBuff[ idx ] = '\0';
            // count-up items:
            mNumTokens ++;
        } // if

    } while( line[ idx++ ] );
}

A scenario of usage would be:

// create an instance capable of splitting strings up to 1000 chars long:
TextLineSplitter spl( 1000 );
spl.SplitLine( "Item1,,Item2,Item3" );
for( size_t i = 0; i < spl.NumTokens(); i++ )
{
    printf( "%s\n", spl.GetToken( i ) );
}

output:

Item1

Item2
Item3

Answer 30

boost::tokenizer is your friend, but consider making your code portable with reference to internationalization (i18n) issues by using wstring/wchar_t instead of the legacy string/char types.

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

using namespace std;
using namespace boost;

typedef tokenizer<char_separator<wchar_t>,
                  wstring::const_iterator, wstring> Tok;

int main()
{
  wstring s;
  while (getline(wcin, s)) {
    char_separator<wchar_t> sep(L" "); // list of separator characters
    Tok tok(s, sep);
    for (Tok::iterator beg = tok.begin(); beg != tok.end(); ++beg) {
      wcout << *beg << L"\t"; // output (or store in vector)
    }
    wcout << L"\n";
  }
  return 0;
}