How do I tokenize a string in C++?

Bill the Lizard picture Bill the Lizard · Sep 10, 2008 · Viewed 565.7k times · Source

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

Ferruccio picture Ferruccio · Sep 11, 2008

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;
    }
}