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  Parsing Console Commands
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The C function strtok (defined in string.h) is great for writing basic text parsers. For those who haven't encountered it before, strtok splits a string into tokens delimited by user defined separators, eg. whitespace, newlines or perhaps commas.

Sadly, it's not quite up to the task of parsing in-game console commands that take strings containing spaces as arguments, eg. <code>say_team "A string with spaces"</code> as it cannot be made to understand that delimiters should be ignored when enclosed by quotes.

I love the simplicity of using strtok, so I decided to code 'ConsoleStrTok' which works in a similar fashion to strtok, and makes the whole process of parsing console commands dead easy. ConsoleStrTok tokenizes the input string, returning each token as a string. A token is either a string of non-whitespace characters, or a string of arbitrary characters that were enclosed by quotes in the input string. This way you can treat each token the same, with no need for special case code.

Parsing is similar to using strtok - for the first call you pass the pointer to the string to be tokenized, and for subsequent calls you pass in NULL. Each time you get back a pointer the current token or NULL if no more can be found.

As an example, your console command parsing routine could be:

void Console::ParseConsoleCommand( char* inputBuffer )
{
    // Find the first token, ie. the command name
    char *commandName = ConsoleStrTok( inputBuffer );

// Check to see if the command exists... // Get the first argument token char *commandArg = ConsoleStrTok( NULL ); int numArgs = 0;

while ( commandArg != NULL ) { ++numArgs; // ...do your per-argument processing, type checking etc. // Get the next argument token commandArg = ConsoleStrTok( NULL ); }

// build argument list and call command handler... }





Important Notes:
  • The input string will have null characters inserted at the end of each token. Keep a copy if you need the original again!
  • Token delimiters are hard coded as whitespace (tab, space, newline)
  • Parsing multiple strings at once is not possible, as I use an internal static variable. For most purposes this won't be a problem, but if you really need to parse multiple strings at once, I recommend placing the routine into its own class, with pNext as a non-static member variable.
  • As a bonus side effect, parsing "say_team" "hello" will return the same tokens as say_team "hello" So you could even have console commands containing spaces, if you're feeling different! ;)

  • Download Associated File: strtokreplace.txt (4,272 bytes)

    /*

    COTD ENTRY ==========

    A Simple Routine for Parsing Console Commands

    Chris Cookson (cjcookson@hotmail.com)

    The C function strtok (defined in string.h) is great for writing basic text parsers. For those who haven't encountered it before, strtok splits a string into tokens delimited by user defined separators, eg. whitespace, newlines or perhaps commas.

    Sadly, it's not quite up to the task of parsing in-game console commands that take strings containing spaces as arguments, eg. <code>say_team "A string with spaces"</code> as it cannot be made to understand that delimiters should be ignored when enclosed by quotes.

    I love the simplicity of using strtok, so I decided to code 'ConsoleStrTok' which works in a similar fashion to strtok, and makes the whole process of parsing console commands dead easy. ConsoleStrTok tokenizes the input string, returning each token as a string. A token is either a string of non-whitespace characters, or a string of arbitrary characters that were enclosed by quotes in the input string. This way you can treat each token the same, with no need for special case code.

    Parsing is similar to using strtok - for the first call you pass the pointer to the string to be tokenized, and for subsequent calls you pass in NULL. Each time you get back a pointer the current token or NULL if no more can be found.

    As an example, your console command parsing routine could be:

    */


    void Console::ParseConsoleCommand( char* inputBuffer ) { // Find the first token, ie. the command name char *commandName = ConsoleStrTok( inputBuffer );

    // Check to see if the command exists... // Get the first argument token char *commandArg = ConsoleStrTok( NULL ); int numArgs = 0;

    while ( commandArg != NULL ) { ++numArgs; // ...do your per-argument processing, type checking etc. // Get the next argument token commandArg = ConsoleStrTok( NULL ); }

    // build argument list and call command handler... }

    /*

    Important Notes:

    * The input string will have null characters inserted at the end of each token. Keep a copy if you need the original again! * Token delimiters are hard coded as whitespace (tab, space, newline) * Parsing multiple strings at once is not possible, as I use an internal static variable. For most purposes this won't be a problem, but if you really need to parse multiple strings at once, I recommend placing the routine into its own class, with pNext as a non-static member variable. * As a bonus side effect, parsing <code>"say_team" "hello"</code> will return the same tokens as <code>say_team "hello"</code> So you could even have console commands containing spaces, if you're feeling different! ;)

    The Routine:

    */


    char * ConsoleStrTok( char *strToken ) { // Where to start searching next static char *pNext; // Start of next token char *pStart;

    // If NULL is passed in, continue searching if ( strToken == NULL ) { if ( pNext != NULL ) { strToken = pNext; } else { // Reached end of original string return NULL; } }

    // Zero length string, so no more tokens to be found if ( *strToken == 0 ) { pNext = NULL; return NULL; }

    // Skip leading whitespace before next token while ( (*strToken == ' ') || (*strToken == '\t') || (*strToken == '\n') ) {

    ++strToken; }

    // It's a quoted literal - skip the first quote char if ( *strToken == '\"' ) { ++strToken;

    pStart = strToken;

    // Find ending quote or end of string while ( (*strToken != '\"') && (*strToken != 0) ) { ++strToken; }

    if ( *strToken == 0 ) { // Reached end of original string pNext = NULL; } else { // More to find, note where to continue searching *strToken = 0; pNext = strToken + 1; }

    } else { // Unquoted token pStart = strToken;

    // Find next whitespace delimiter or end of string while ( (*strToken != 0) && (*strToken != ' ') && (*strToken != '\t') && (*strToken != '\n' ) ) { ++strToken; }

    // Reached end of original string? if ( *strToken == 0 ) { pNext = NULL; } else { *strToken = 0; pNext = strToken + 1; } return pStart; }

    // Return ptr to start of token return pStart; }

    /*

    Cheers,

    Chris Cookson --- cjcookson@hotmail.com

    */

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