Question

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Reaching a specific word in a string

I asked a very similar question but apparently I asked it wrong. The question is that I need to reach the 3rd word in a string in C++ and the string is like this:

word1\tword2\tword3\tword4\tword5\tword6

word2 can have spaces inside.

I tried to read the string character by character but I found it inefficient. I tried code

std::istringstream str(array[i]); 
str >> temp >> temp >> word; 
array2[i] = word; 

and it didn’t work because of the spaces inside word2.

Can you tell me how I can do that?

Answer 1

The most straightforward way:

#include <iostream>
int main()
{
    //input string:
    std::string str = "w o r d 1\tw o r d2\tword3\tword4";
    int wordStartPosition = 0;//The start of each word in the string

    for( int i = 0; i < 2; i++ )//looking for the third one (start counting from 0)
        wordStartPosition = str.find_first_of( '\t', wordStartPosition + 1 );

    //Getting where our word ends:
    int wordEndPosition = str.find_first_of( '\t', wordStartPosition + 1 );
    //Getting the desired word and printing:
    std::string result =  str.substr( wordStartPosition + 1, str.length() - wordEndPosition - 1 );
    std::cout << result;
}

output:

word3