strpbrk

 

C

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Technical Specifications

Symbol index

 

Strings library

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Null-terminated byte strings

Functions
Character manipulation
isalnum isalpha islower isupper isdigit isxdigit isblank (C99)	iscntrl isgraph isspace isprint ispunct tolower toupper
Conversions to and from numeric formats
atoiatolatoll (C99) atof strtolstrtoll (C99) strtoulstrtoull (C99)	strtoimaxstrtoumax (C99)(C99) strtofstrtodstrtold (C99)(C99) strfromfstrfromdstrfroml (C23)(C23)(C23)
String manipulation
strcpystrcpy_s (C11) strncpystrncpy_s (C11) strcatstrcat_s (C11)	strncatstrncat_s (C11) strxfrm strdup (C23) strndup (C23)
String examination
strlenstrnlen_s (C11) strcmp strncmp strcoll strchr strrchr	strspn strcspn strpbrk strstr strtokstrtok_s (C11)
Memory manipulation
memchr memcmp memsetmemset_explicitmemset_s (C23)(C11)	memcpymemcpy_s (C11) memmovememmove_s (C11) memccpy (C23)
Miscellaneous
strerrorstrerror_sstrerrorlen_s (C11)(C11)

 

Defined in header <string.h>
char *strpbrk( const char *dest, const char *breakset );	(1)
/*QChar*/ *strpbrk( /*QChar*/ *dest, const char *breakset );	(2)	(since C23)

1 ) Scans the null-terminated byte string pointed to by dest for any character from the null-terminated byte string pointed to by breakset, and returns a pointer to that character.

2) Type-generic function equivalent to (1). Let T be an unqualified character object type.

• If dest is of type const T*, the return type is const char*.
• Otherwise, if dest is of type T*, the return type is char*.
• Otherwise, the behavior is undefined.

If a macro definition of each of these generic functions is suppressed to access an actual function (e.g. if (strpbrk) or a function pointer is used), the actual function declaration (1) becomes visible.

The behavior is undefined if either dest or breakset is not a pointer to a null-terminated byte string.

Parameters

dest	-	pointer to the null-terminated byte string to be analyzed
breakset	-	pointer to the null-terminated byte string that contains the characters to search for

Return value

Pointer to the first character in dest, that is also in breakset, or null pointer if no such character exists.

Notes

The name stands for "string pointer break", because it returns a pointer to the first of the separator ("break") characters.

Example

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
 
int main(void)
{
    const char* str = "hello world, friend of mine!";
    const char* sep = " ,!";
 
    unsigned int cnt = 0;
    do
    {
       str = strpbrk(str, sep); // find separator
       if(str) str += strspn(str, sep); // skip separator
       ++cnt; // increment word count
    }
    while(str && *str);
 
    printf("There are %u words\n", cnt);
}

Output:

There are 5 words

References

• C23 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2024):

• 7.24.5.4 The strpbrk function (p: TBD)

• C17 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2018):

• 7.24.5.4 The strpbrk function (p: TBD)

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.24.5.4 The strpbrk function (p: 368)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.21.5.4 The strpbrk function (p: 331)

• C89/C90 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990):

• 4.11.5.4 The strpbrk function

See also

strcspn	returns the length of the maximum initial segment that consists of only the characters not found in another byte string (function)
strchr	finds the first occurrence of a character (function)
strtokstrtok_s (C11)	finds the next token in a byte string (function)
C++ documentation for strpbrk