Splits a string :
The strtok function splits a string into pieces; it can be called in many ways. The function receives one string as an input argument. It appears for the first delimiter that is a character or set of characters which act as a separator surrounded by the string. By default, the delimiter is any whitespace character. The function returns a token that is the starting of the string, up to the first delimiter. It also returns the rest of the string, that includes the delimiter. Assigning the returned values to a vector of two variables will capture both of these. The format is as shown below:
[token rest] = strtok(string)
here token and rest are the variable names. For illustration,
>> sentence1 = 'Hello there'
sentence1 =
Hello there
>> [word rest] = strtok(sentence1)
word =
Hello
rest =
there
>> length(word)
ans =
5
>> length(rest)
ans =
6
Note that the rest of the string involves the blank space delimiter. By the default, a delimiter for the token is a whitespace character (that means the token is defined as everything up to the blank space), but alternating delimiters can be defined. The format is as shown below:
[token rest] = strtok(string, delimeters)
returns a token which is the starting of the string, up to the first character hold within the delimiters string as well as the rest of the string. In the illustration below, the delimiter is the character 'l'.
>> [word rest] = strtok(sentence1,'l')
word =
He
rest =
llo there
The leading delimiter characters are ignored, whether it is the specified delimiter or a default whitespace. For illustration, the leading blanks are ignored here:
>> [firstpart lastpart] = strtok(' materials science')
firstpart =
materials
lastpart =
science