reading from an input line with ""

December 28, 2021

I have this program that is supposed to read a line e.g post "nice job" john and i want to get every token in that line but for some reason i only get some of them.

Expected output:

post
nice job
john

My output:

post
nice

im sure im putting the correct format on sscanf so whats the problem i dont get why it doenst consider "nice job" as one word.

Program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
    char token1[128];
    char token2[128];
    char token3[128];
    char str[] = "post \"nice job\" john";
    sscanf(str,"%s \"%s\" %s",token1,token2,token3);
    puts(token1);
    puts(token2);
    puts(token3);
   return(0);
}

>Solution :

The second %s reads "nice" because %s stops at the first whitespace. The format string then demands a match for a " quote, which isn’t next (a space is next). The scanf functions don’t skip input until a match is found, they stall. Always check the return value which should have been 3.

This code

#include <stdio.h>
    
int main()
{
    char token1[128] = "";
    char token2[128] = "";
    char token3[128] = "";
    char str[] = "post \"nice job\" john";
    int res = sscanf(str, "%s \"%[^\"]\"%s", token1, token2, token3);
    printf("%d\n", res);
    puts(token1);
    puts(token2);
    puts(token3);
    return(0);
}

outputs