c program to print each word in a sentence

Question

Hi,

Can you help me with this? I want to accept a sentence from the user and print each word in the sentence to the user....

I need a C program to do this!

Answer 1

Have a look at strtok.

Answer 2

You won't learn anything if I write the program for you. But do a research on scanf and printf.

Answer 3

If this is homework, you should:

• tag it so.
• try to do it first, then post what you have so we can help you out.

As a hint, have a look at fgets(), strtok() and printf().

If it's not homework or you want the actual solution, say so. There are some here that will help you out anyway.

For some fun, here's a cleverly encrypted solution that I'll give you the pass-key to once you've shown some initiative. And no, guys, it's not ROT-13, that would be far too easy :-)

R:?4=F56 kDE5:@]9m
R:?4=F56 kDEC:?8]9m
DE2E:4 492C 3F77,hhhh.j
:?E >2:?WX L
    492C YH@C5j
    AC:?E7 WQt?E6C J@FC D6?E6?46i QXj
    786ED W3F77[ D:K6@7 W3F77X \ `[ DE5:?Xj
    3F77,D:K6@7 W3F77X \ `. l V-_Vj
    :7 W3F77,DEC=6? W3F77X \ `. ll V-?VX
        3F77,DEC=6? W3F77X \ `. l V-_Vj
    AC:?E7 WQ\m ,TD.-?Q[ 3F77Xj
    H@C5 l DECE@< W3F77[ Q[]j-QVi -EPWX\km,.LNQXj
    H9:=6 WH@C5 Pl }&{{X L
        :7 WDEC4>A WH@C5[ QQX Pl _X L
            AC:?E7 WQ   \m TD-?Q[ H@C5Xj
        N
        H@C5 l DECE@< W}&{{[ Q[]j-QVi -EPWX\km,.LNQXj
    N
    C6EFC? _j
N

/* You can spend the next forty-seven days trying to decrpyt it, but you may be better off doing your homework, no? */

---

Update:

That's enough time. Since the original questioner hasn't come back (and the homework tag was added by someone else), I'll reveal the key as ROT-47, only very slightly better than ROT-13 (but still useless) for encryption. My viewpoint is that if someone wants help with their homework, they should clearly mark it so, otherwise SO is a Q&A site for real answers. I'm happy to give pointers (as I did above) but, in the end, it's better to have solutions.

The actual code was (slightly modified to add '?' as punctuation, make it a define and add comments):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

/* Separators and limited size line buffer. */

#define SEPS "?,.;\"': \t!()-<>[]{}"

static char buff[9999];

int main() {
    char *word;

    /* Get a complete sentence from the user. */

    printf ("Enter your sentence: ");
    fgets (buff, sizeof (buff) - 1, stdin);

    /* Ensure null-terminated and remove newline charactre. */

    buff[sizeof (buff) - 1] = '\0';
    if (buff[strlen (buff) - 1] == '\n')
        buff[strlen (buff) - 1] = '\0';

    /* Print complete sentence. */

    printf ("-> [%s]\n", buff);

    /* Use strtok to get one word at a time. */

    word = strtok (buff, SEPS);
    while (word != NULL) {
        /* Not interested in empty words (two separators together). */

        if (strcmp (word, "") != 0) {
            printf ("   -> %s\n", word);
        }
        word = strtok (NULL, SEPS);
    }

    return 0;
}

and here's a sample run:

Enter your sentence: Hello there, my name is Pax. How are you today?
-> [Hello there, my name is Pax. How are you today?]
   -> Hello
   -> there
   -> my
   -> name
   -> is
   -> Pax
   -> How
   -> are
   -> you
   -> today

Answer 4

The easiest way to do it is to use strtok(). The only real issue with that approach is that it isn't thread safe. GNU has an extension called strtok_r() which maintains the state in a local pointer in stead, and thus can be used in multiple threads.

Answer 5

learn lex or flex and write a simple grammar to do the tokenizing for you..

ie here's the flex code:

%{
%}

word [^ \t\n]+
%%

{word} { printf("%s\r\n", yytext); }
.|\n   { /* ignore */ }

%%

main()
{
    yylex();
}

Answer 6

C isn't very good for string manipulation. Maybe seeing how it is done in another language may help?

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Type in a sentence, hit return to submit:\n\t";
my $input_string = <>;
my @list_of_words = split(/[ !?.'"]/, $input_string);
foreach my $word (@list_of_words) {
  print "$word\n";
}

Or shorter:

#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach (split (/[ !?.'"]/, <>)) {
  print
}