sscanf - match substrings in a string

int sscanf( string str, string fmt, mixed var1, mixed var2, ... );

Parse a string 'str' using the format 'fmt'. The format 'fmt' consists of text to match against 'str', separated by patterns which begin with '%'. The following patterns are supported:

'%%' - matches '%'

'%x' - matches a hexidecimal number

'%d' - matches a decimal number

'%f' - matches a floating point number

'%(regexp)' - matches anything that matches the regular expression 'regexp' (see the regexp() efun for details)

'%s' - matches a string; see below

Note that the third and following arguments are NOT expressions; they must be valid lvalues (locations which can be assigned to). As matches are encountered in the string, the corresponding values are put directly into the third and following arguments. If a problem is encountered (either some of the text between patterns doesn't match, or a pattern can't be matched to the corresponding input) the number of matches so far is returned, and the remaining arguments are left unchanged. If a '*' comes immediately after the '%' in the format, then that pattern is matched, but not assigned to a variable. It is counted in the return value.

'%s' is handled as follows. If it is followed by text, '%s' matches up the the next ocurrence of the text. For example, the format "%sxy%s" will match "fox" to the first %s when used on the string "foxxybarxyz". If the %s occurs at the end of the string, the remainder of the string is matched. If it is followed immediately by another pattern, then %s matches up to the first valid match for the following pattern. "%s%s" is illegal.

See also: explode , replace_string , strsrch