.\" Copyright 1993 David Metcalfe (david@prism.demon.co.uk)

.\"

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.\" References consulted:

.\"     Linux libc source code

.\"     Lewine's _POSIX Programmer's Guide_ (O'Reilly & Associates, 1991)

.\"     386BSD man pages

.\" Modified Sat Jul 24 18:00:10 1993 by Rik Faith (faith@cs.unc.edu)

.\" Modified Mon Jan 20 12:04:18 1997 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)

.\" Modified Tue Jan 23 20:23:07 2001 by Andries Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl)

.\"

.TH STRSEP 3  2016-03-15 "GNU" "Linux Programmer's Manual"

.SH NAME

strsep \- extract token from string

.SH SYNOPSIS

.nf

.B #include <string.h>

.PP

.BI "char *strsep(char **" stringp ", const char *" delim );

.fi

.PP

.in -4n

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see

.BR feature_test_macros (7)):

.in

.PP

.BR strsep ():

    Since glibc 2.19:

        _DEFAULT_SOURCE

    Glibc 2.19 and earlier:

        _BSD_SOURCE

.SH DESCRIPTION

If

.I *stringp

is NULL, the

.BR strsep ()

function returns NULL

and does nothing else.

Otherwise, this function finds the first token

in the string

.IR *stringp ,

that is delimited by one of the bytes in the string

.IR delim .

This token is terminated by overwriting the delimiter

with a null byte (\(aq\\0\(aq),

and

.I *stringp

is updated to point past the token.

In case no delimiter was found, the token is taken to be

the entire string

.IR *stringp ,

and

.I *stringp

is made NULL.

.SH RETURN VALUE

The

.BR strsep ()

function returns a pointer to the token,

that is, it returns the original value of

.IR *stringp .

.SH ATTRIBUTES

For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see

.BR attributes (7).

.TS

allbox;

lb lb lb

l l l.

Interface	Attribute	Value

T{

.BR strsep ()

T}	Thread safety	MT-Safe

.TE

.SH CONFORMING TO

4.4BSD.

.SH NOTES

The

.BR strsep ()

function was introduced as a replacement for

.BR strtok (3),

since the latter cannot handle empty fields.

However,

.BR strtok (3)

conforms to C89/C99 and hence is more portable.

.SH BUGS

Be cautious when using this function.

If you do use it, note that:

.IP * 2

This function modifies its first argument.

.IP *

This function cannot be used on constant strings.

.IP *

The identity of the delimiting character is lost.

.SH SEE ALSO

.BR index (3),

.BR memchr (3),

.BR rindex (3),

.BR strchr (3),

.BR string (3),

.BR strpbrk (3),

.BR strspn (3),

.BR strstr (3),

.BR strtok (3)

.SH COLOPHON

This page is part of release 4.15 of the Linux

.I man-pages

project.

A description of the project,

information about reporting bugs,

and the latest version of this page,

can be found at

\%https://www.kernel.org/doc/man\-pages/.