SPLIT(3)                   UNIX System V(8 Dec 1990)                   SPLIT(3)


NAME
      split - split string into fields

SYNOPSIS
      int split(string, fields, nfields, separators)
      char *string;
      char *fields[];
      int nfields;
      char *separators;

DESCRIPTION
      Split splits the string into fields according to the separators, much in
      the manner of awk(1)'s field facilities.  String has NUL s written into
      it to do the splitting, and pointers to the resulting strings are placed
      into the fields array, up to the number specified by nfields.  If the
      number of fields found exceeds nfields, the writing of NUL s stops, so
      that the last entry in fields points to the remainder of the string.

      The returned value is the number of fields present in string, which may
      exceed nfields.  If the returned value is less than nfields, the contents
      of the remaining entries in fields (up to the limit set by nfields) are
      undefined.  (Note, in particular, that split does not terminate the list
      of fields with a NULL pointer.)

      If separators is a string of length 1, that character is the separator:
      each occurrence of it separates the current field from a new field, which
      may be of length 0 if another separator follows immediately.

      If separators is a string of length >1, all the characters in it are
      separators:  any sequence of characters composed entirely of separators
      separates the current field from a new field, which is of length 0 only
      if it is at the beginning or end of the string.  Characters may be
      duplicated in separators; in particular, a separators string consisting
      of the same character twice gives fields separated by sequences of that
      character.

      As a special case, if separators is a string of length 0, sequences of
      white-space characters (here defined as blanks and tabs) are the
      separators, and sequences of separators at the beginning or end of the
      string are ignored, so there can be no fields of length 0.

      In all cases, an empty string (or, in the case of a separators of length
      0, a string consisting only of white space) has 0 fields.

SEE ALSO
      awk(1), regexp(3), strtok(3)

HISTORY
      Written at University of Toronto by Henry Spencer, with contributions
      from Geoff Collyer and Mark Moraes.




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SPLIT(3)                   UNIX System V(8 Dec 1990)                   SPLIT(3)


BUGS
      Too many different decisions are bundled into the single separators
      argument.  Arguably it should be a regular expression instead.

      Specifying several characters as separators is rather inefficient; if
      speed is a priority in such a case, it is better to custom-build code
      that knows about the particular separators desired.















































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