how to extract the last token in C?

Index into the string maintain last and current index. When current is at a "|" then between last and current is your next word. Change last = current + 1.

When current points to "\0" you are done.

int current = 0, last =0;

while (array[current] != '\0')

{

if (array[current] = '|')

{

token is between array[current]-1 and last

current++;

last=current;

}

else

current++;

}

if (last != current)

then last token is at array[last];

Why don't you want to use strtok()? It sounds like a perfect application of it. If you're worried about destroying the original string, make a copy of the original pointer or copy the entire string somewhere. HTH

If all you really want is the last token, it's pretty easy (see below). If you want full tokenization functionality without using strtok, it'll be a bit more work.

#include <stdio.h>

#include <string.h>

#define MAX_TOK_LEN 128

#define DELIM '|'

const char *s0 = "one|two|three|four";

const char *s1 = "five";

const char *s2 = "six|";

char tok[MAX_TOK_LEN];

char *lastTok(const char *, char *);

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

    printf("%s\n",lastTok(s0,tok));

    printf("%s\n",lastTok(s1,tok));

    printf("%s\n",lastTok(s2,tok));

    return 0;

}

char *lastTok(const char *str, char *tok) {

    if ((str != NULL) && (tok != NULL)) {

        char *p = strrchr(str,DELIM);

        p = (p != NULL) ? p+1 : (char *)str;

        strcpy(tok,p);

    }

    return tok;

}

#if 0

Program output:

four

five

#endif