As an alternative, still C-style, use sscanf:
/* sscanf example */ #include <stdio.h> int main () { char sentence []="Rudolph is 12 years old"; char str [20]; int i; sscanf (sentence,"%s %*s %d",str,&i); printf ("%s -> %d\n",str,i); return 0; } [EDIT] As reported by @Killzone Kid in the comment, there is an std version.
#include <iostream> #include <clocale> #include <cstdio> int main() { int i, j; float x, y; char str1[10], str2[4]; wchar_t warr[2]; std::setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.utf8"); char input[] = u8"25 54.32E-1 Thompson 56789 0123 56ß水"; // parse as follows: // %d: an integer // %f: a floating-point value // %9s: a string of at most 9 non-whitespace characters // %2d: two-digit integer (digits 5 and 6) // %f: a floating-point value (digits 7, 8, 9) // %*d an integer which isn't stored anywhere // ' ': all consecutive whitespace // %3[0-9]: a string of at most 3 digits (digits 5 and 6) // %2lc: two wide characters, using multibyte to wide conversion int ret = std::sscanf(input, "%d%f%9s%2d%f%*d %3[0-9]%2lc", &i, &x, str1, &j, &y, str2, warr); std::cout << "Converted " << ret << " fields:\n" << "i = " << i << "\nx = " << x << '\n' << "str1 = " << str1 << "\nj = " << j << '\n' << "y = " << y << "\nstr2 = " << str2 << '\n' << std::hex << "warr[0] = U+" << warr[0] << " warr[1] = U+" << warr[1] << '\n'; }