strtok_r(3)

strtok_r3

String tokens

Part of strtok(3).

Usage

#include <string.h>

char *

strtok(char *str, const char *sep);

char *

strtok_r(char *str, const char *sep, char **last);

Library

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

Overview

This interface is obsoleted by strsep(3).

The strtok() function is used to isolate sequential tokens in a null-terminated string, str. These tokens are separated in the string by at least one of the characters in sep. The first time that strtok() is called, str should be specified; subsequent calls, wishing to obtain further tokens from the same string, should pass a null pointer instead. The separator string, sep, must be supplied each time, and may change between calls.

The implementation will behave as if no library function calls strtok().

The strtok_r() function is a reentrant version of strtok(). The context pointer last must be provided on each call. The strtok_r() function may also be used to nest two parsing loops within one another, as long as separate context pointers are used.

Return values

The strtok() and strtok_r() functions return a pointer to the beginning of each subsequent token in the string, after replacing the token itself with a NUL character. When no more tokens remain, a null pointer is returned.

Examples

The following uses strtok_r() to parse two strings using separate contexts:

char test[80], blah[80];
char *sep = "\\/:;=-";
char *word, *phrase, *brkt, *brkb;
strcpy(test, "This;is.a:test:of=the/string\\tokenizer-function.");
for (word = strtok_r(test, sep, &brkt);
     word;
     word = strtok_r(NULL, sep, &brkt))
{
    strcpy(blah, "blah:blat:blab:blag");
    for (phrase = strtok_r(blah, sep, &brkb);
         phrase;
         phrase = strtok_r(NULL, sep, &brkb))
    {
        printf("So far we're at %s:%s\n", word, phrase);
    }
}

Releases

76 releases since FreeBSD 3.1-RELEASE; the text changed 43 times.

  1. 3.1–3.2
  2. 3.3–3.4
  3. 3.5–3.5.1
  4. 4.0
  5. 4.1–4.2
  6. 4.3
  7. 4.4
  8. 4.5–4.11
  9. 5.0
  10. 5.1–5.5
  11. 6.0–6.3
  12. 6.4
  13. 7.0
  14. 7.1
  15. 7.2
  16. 7.3
  17. 7.4
  18. 8.0
  19. 8.1
  20. 8.2
  21. 8.3
  22. 8.4
  23. 9.0
  24. 9.1
  25. 9.2
  26. 9.3
  27. 10.0
  28. 10.1
  29. 10.2
  30. 10.3
  31. 10.4
  32. 11.0
  33. 11.1
  34. 11.2
  35. 11.3
  36. 11.4
  37. 12.0
  38. 12.1
  39. 12.2
  40. 12.3
  41. 12.4
  42. 13.0–13.2
  43. 13.3–14.5
  44. 15.0–16.0

Standards

The strtok() function conforms to ISO/IEC 9899:1990 (“ISO C90”). The strtok_r() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).

Authors

Wes Peters ⟨[email protected]⟩, Softweyr LLC

Based on the FreeBSD 3.0 implementation.

Bugs

The System V strtok(), if handed a string containing only delimiter characters, will not alter the next starting point, so that a call to strtok() with a different (or empty) delimiter string may return a non-NULL value. Since this implementation always alters the next starting point, such a sequence of calls would always return NULL.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.