sscanf in C

Syntax of sscanf() Function in C

Parameters of sscanf() Function in C

The sscanf() function requires two mandatory arguments and optional additional arguments.

1. char* string_name :
   Pointer to the string that needs to be read.
2. char* format_string :
   It is a string containing a unique sequence of characters that specify how characters will be extracted from the input string. It can contain whitespace characters, non-whitespace characters (except %), and format specifiers.
3. &var_name1, ... :
   These are the additional-arguments that sscanf takes to store the values (or items) extracted from the string we read. Each argument should be a pointer to a variable whose data type is the same as the corresponding format specifier. The number of these additional arguments should be at least equal to the number of format specifiers in the format_string string. If the number of arguments is more than the number of format specifiers, the sscanf() function ignores the redundant arguments.

Return Value of sscanf() Function in C

• Return type on a successful execution : int (any integer greater than or equal to 0)
• The return value in case of an input failure (string could not be read) : EOF (EOF denotes the end of an input string)

On successful execution, the sscanf() function returns the count of successfully assigned additional arguments. This count value ranges from the expected number of items to zero (in case of a format mismatch failure).

Example

Let us look at a simple example to get a basic understanding of the sscanf() function in C.

In this example, we will use sscanf() to read data from a string and store the read data in another variable.

Output :

In this example, we had a string str containing a single word, "Programming". To extract this word from str, we used the sscanf() function. Because we wanted to extract text from the string, we used "%s" as the format_string. The value extracted by sscanf() was stored in the extracted_value variable.

Now, because we extracted one value using sscanf(), sscanf() returned the value 1. This value was stored in the items_read variable. Finally, we printed the extracted_value and items_read variables.

Exceptions of sscanf() Function in C

The sscanf() function usually returns a positive int value that depicts the number of items it reads. However, in some cases, it might return unexpected values. These exceptions are:

1. Format mismatch :
   If there is a format mismatch between the format specifier and the corresponding item in the given string, sscanf might return a number that is smaller than the value we expected.
2. Input failure :
   If sscanf is unable to read a string, it returns EOF instead of a number.
3. Other errors :
   In case of any error other than an input failure, sscanf returns -1.

What is sscanf() Function in C ?

In the C programming language, sscanf stands for string scanf. The function sscanf in C is a file handling function. It is used to read input from a string, a buffer (temporary storage that stores input/output commands), or a character array. The input read by sscanf is stored in the locations given in additional-arguments.

A string containing multiple words, separated with whitespace characters (like space characters or new line characters) can be used as input in the sscanf() function. In this case, The sscanf() function will read all words, not just the first one.

More Examples

Example : 1 - Reading Multiple Items of Different Data Types

Output :

In the above example, we used sscanf() to extract the brand name, model name, and model number from the string phone_str. Because the string phone_str contained 2 texts (separated by whitespace) and 1 number, we used 3 format specifiers "%s %s %f" to read values from the string.