would love some tips on how to make this code less ugly.

strated working on this problem with this question in stackoverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9707957/parsing-a-string-of-the-form-word1-word2-word3

that is suppose to be strict ansiC89 pedantic code.

should extract "word1" "word2" and "word3" from a string fomatted [ word1 ] word2 [ word3 ] and return failure in any other format

anyway it seems to work. but it seems so ugly.

no need to comment about the fact GetTokenBetweenSquareBraces and GetTokenBtweenOpositeSquareBraces are code duplication. I know but im after 14 hours of work and going to sleep now.

would love some tips how to clean this up.

regards.

This is supposed to be strict ANSI C89 pedantic code. It should extract word1, word2 and word3 from a string formatted [ word1 ] word2 [ word3 ] and return failure in any other format.

It seems to work, but it seems so ugly. No need to comment about the fact GetTokenBetweenSquareBraces and GetTokenBtweenOpositeSquareBraces are duplicates.

I would love some tips on how to clean this up.

#include <locale>
#include <fstream>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>

#include <locale>
#include <string>
#include <sstream>
#include <iostream>

// This is my facet that will treat the ,.- as space characters and thus ignore them.
class TabSepFacet: public std::ctype<char>
{
    public:
        typedef std::ctype<char>    base;
        typedef base::char_type     char_type;

        TabSepFacet(std::locale const& l)
            : base(table)
        {
             std::ctype<char> const&  defaultCType  = std::use_facet<std::ctype<char> >(l);

            // Copy the default value from the provided locale
            static  char data[256];
            for(int loop = 0;loop < 256;++loop) { data[loop] = loop; }
            defaultCType.is(data, data+256, table);

            // Remove the other spaces
            for(int loop = 0;loop < 256;++loop)
            {
                if (table[loop] & base::space)
                 {   table[loop] ^= base::space;
                }
            }
            // Only a tab is a space
            table['\t'] |= base::space;
        }
    private:
        base::mask  table[256];
};

int main()
{

    std::stringstream   data("This is a\tTab");
    const std::locale   tabSepLocale(data.getloc(), new TabSepFacet(data.getloc()));


    data.imbue(tabSepLocale);

    std::string     word;
    while(data >> word)
    {
        std::cout << "Word(" << word << ")\n";
    }
}

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

char * TrimWhiteSpaces(char *str) {
    char *out = str;
    int i;
    int len = strlen(str);
    for (i=0; i<len && isspace(str[i]); i++, out++); /*scan forward*/
    for (i=len-1; i>=0 && isspace(str[i]); str[i]=0, i--);/*scan backward*/
    return out;
}
char * GetTokenBetweenSquareBraces(char * input, char **output, int * output_size) {
    char *p = TrimWhiteSpaces(input);
    *output_size=0;
    if (p[0] == '[')
    {
        *output = TrimWhiteSpaces(p + 1);
        do       
        {                 
            (*output_size)++;         
        }while((*output)[*output_size] != ']' && isalnum((*output)[*output_size]));
    }
    else
    {
        return NULL;
    }
    return (*output) + *output_size;
}
char * GetTokenBtweenOpositeSquareBraces(char * input, char **output, int * output_size) { 
    char *p = TrimWhiteSpaces(input);
    *output_size=0;
    if (p[0] == ']')
    {
        *output = TrimWhiteSpaces(p + 1);
        do        
        {                 
            (*output_size)++;         
        }while((*output)[*output_size] != '[' && isalnum((*output)[*output_size]));
    }
    else
    {
        return NULL;
    }
    return (*output) + *output_size;
}
int GetWords(char * str,char * word1,char * word2,char * word3)
{
    char * next=NULL,*output=NULL;

    int outputsize;
    printf ("\nSplitting string \"%s\" into tokens:\n",str);

    next = GetTokenBetweenSquareBraces (str,&output,&outputsize);
    strncpy(word1,output,outputsize);
    word1[outputsize] = '\0';
    strcpy(word1,TrimWhiteSpaces(word1));
    if(!next) return 0;

    next = GetTokenBtweenOpositeSquareBraces (next,&output,&outputsize);
    strncpy(word2,output,outputsize);
    word2[outputsize] = '\0';
    strcpy(word2,TrimWhiteSpaces(word2));

    if(!next) return 0;

    next = GetTokenBetweenSquareBraces (next,&output,&outputsize);
    strncpy(word3,output,outputsize);
    word3[outputsize] = '\0';
    strcpy(word3,TrimWhiteSpaces(word3));

    if(!next) return 0;

    return 1;
}
void TestGetWords(char * str )
{
    char word1[20],word2[20],word3[20];
    if (GetWords(str,word1,word2,word3))
    {
        printf("|%s|%s|%s|\n",word1,word2,word3);
    }
    else
    {
        printf("3ViLLLL\n");
    }

}
int main (void)
{
    char str[] ="[  hello   ]  gfd   [ hello2 ] ";
    char str2[] ="[ hello   [  gfd   [ hello2 ] ";
    char str3[] ="the wie321vg42g42g!@#";
    char str4[] ="][123[]23][231[";

    TestGetWords(str);
    TestGetWords(str2);
    TestGetWords(str3);
    TestGetWords(str4);
    getchar();
    return 1;
}