What should I use instead of sscanf?

Question

I have a problem that sscanf solves (extracting things from a string). I don't like sscanf though since it's not type-safe and is old and horrible. I want to be clever and use some more modern parts of the C++ standard library. What should I use instead?

Solution 1

Try std::stringstream:

#include <sstream>

...

std::stringstream s("123 456 789");
int a, b, c;
s >> a >> b >> c;

Solution 2

For most jobs standard streams do the job perfectly,

std::string data = "AraK 22 4.0";
std::stringstream convertor(data);
std::string name;
int age;
double gpa;

convertor >> name >> age >> gpa;

if(convertor.fail() == true)
{
    // if the data string is not well-formatted do what ever you want here
}

If you need more powerful tools for more complex parsing, then you could consider Regex or even Spirit from Boost.

Solution 3

If you include sstream you'll have access to the stringstream classes that provide streams for strings, which is what you need. Roguewave has some good examples on how to use it.