Question

I need an equivalent to C’s vsscanf() in Java. More detailled, I have this here:

private void parseString(String parseMe, String format, Object[] args) {
    // something like: vsscanf(parseMe, format, args);
}

Note that I have indeed read about an equivalent for sscanf(), so it could be done easily from there. But I ask myself whether there is a more elegant solution than filling args with a for loop.

Also, it would be nice if the solution allows using varargs instead of an array, too. See below.

parseString(str, format, x, y, z);

Answer 1

You can use java.text.MessageFormat. For example:

public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
    String input="hello 1:2.3.4";
    MessageFormat form = new MessageFormat("{0} {1,number}:{2,number,integer}.{3,number}");
    Object[] data = form.parse(input);
    for(Object o : data) {
        System.out.println(o.getClass()+" : "+o.toString());
    }
}

Which produces the output:

class java.lang.String : hello
class java.lang.Long : 1
class java.lang.Long : 2
class java.lang.Double : 3.4

Of course, the format isn’t as compact as that used by scanf, but it is out of the box Java.