sscanf not extracting pattern

Question

I am trying to figure out the pattern I should be giving to sscanf. I have a string abcde(1GB). I want to extract 1 and GB. I am using

    char list[]= "abcde(1GB)";
    int memory_size =0;
    char unit[3]={0} ;
sscanf(list, "%*s%d%s" , &memory_size, unit);

I do not see tokens extracted when I print I see memory_size =0 and NULL in unit.

Thanks

Answer 1

your sscanf() string format should be:

sscanf(list, "%*[^(](%d%[^)]" , &memory_size, unit);

• %[^)] means catch charachters and stop ctaching when finding the charachter ) or end of the string
• %*[^(] means:
  • [^\(] means catch charachters and stop ctaching when finding the charachter ( - as opposed to a more conventional %s - catching charachters and stop ctaching when finding space characters"
  • * means "read but not store"