Question

Can someone please explaing why the string is not splitted in the following code

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    char name[] = "first:last";
    char first[20], last[20];

    sscanf(name, "%s:%s", first, last);

    printf("first: %s, last: %s", first, last);

    return 0;
}

The output is

first: first:last, last:

but it should be

first: first, last: last

Kindly check code here http://ideone.com/JDSTt

Answer 1

You can use something like this:

sscanf(name, "%[^:]:%s", first, last);

: is not whitespace, so a regular %s will not consider it as a delimiter. See scanf for more details.

(Edited demo: http://ideone.com/m4LVP)