Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnewsl!mpl
From: mpl@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (michael.p.lindner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: In defense of scanf() (Re: Re^2: scanf(..))
Summary: strtok considered dangerous by author
Message-ID: <824@cbnewsl.ATT.COM>
Date: 16 Jun 89 13:36:47 GMT
References: <225800176@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <11831@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <4563@ficc.uu.net>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 19

In article <4563@ficc.uu.net>, peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
> In article <3145@buengc.BU.EDU>, bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
> > When filtering tabular data from files, ....
> > .... scanf is
> > suited ideally.
>
> I tend to stick with strspn() and strtok(), myself.
>
> Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

Hope you never have to do anything complex.  If you call strtok on e string
in the middle of a strtok of another string it trashes its state information
on the first string (a little known feature), which can cause extremely
elusive bugs.  My previous project got stuck with this when we started using
some library code which called it.  For this reason, I avoid strtok like the
plague in all but the simplest applications.

Mike Lindner
attunix!mpl