strtok, strtok_s

Tokenizes a null-terminated byte string.

1. ↑ A token may still be formed in a subsequent call with a different separator string.
2. ↑ No more tokens can be formed in subsequent calls.

Parameters

Return value

Note

This function is destructive: it writes the ' \0 ' characters in the elements of the string str . In particular, a string literal cannot be used as the first argument of strtok .

Each call to strtok modifies a static variable: is not thread safe.

Unlike most other tokenizers, the delimiters in strtok can be different for each subsequent token, and can even depend on the contents of the previous tokens.

The strtok_s function differs from the POSIX strtok_r function by guarding against storing outside of the string being tokenized, and by checking runtime constraints. The Microsoft CRT strtok_s signature matches this POSIX strtok_r definition, not the C11 strtok_s .

Example

#define __STDC_WANT_LIB_EXT1__ 1
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
int main(void)
{
    char input[] = "A bird came down the walk";
    printf("Parsing the input string '%s'\n", input);
    char* token = strtok(input, " ");
    while (token)
    {
        puts(token);
        token = strtok(NULL, " ");
    }
    printf("Contents of the input string now: '");
    for (size_t n = 0; n < sizeof input; ++n)
        input[n] ? putchar(input[n]) : fputs("\\0", stdout);
    puts("'");
#ifdef __STDC_LIB_EXT1__
    char str[] = "A bird came down the walk";
    rsize_t strmax = sizeof str;
    const char* delim = " ";
    char* next_token;
    printf("Parsing the input string '%s'\n", str);
    token = strtok_s(str, &strmax, delim, &next_token);
    while (token)
    {
        puts(token);
        token = strtok_s(NULL, &strmax, delim, &next_token);
    }
    printf("Contents of the input string now: '");
    for (size_t n = 0; n < sizeof str; ++n)
        str[n] ? putchar(str[n]) : fputs("\\0", stdout);
    puts("'");
#endif
}

Parsing the input string 'A bird came down the walk'
A
bird
came
down
the
walk
Contents of the input string now: 'A\0bird\0came\0down\0the\0walk\0'
Parsing the input string 'A bird came down the walk'
A
bird
came
down
the
walk
Contents of the input string now: 'A\0bird\0came\0down\0the\0walk\0'

References

See also