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4.10. Finding The NTH Instance of A Substring: Problem
4.10. Finding The NTH Instance of A Substring: Problem
Topics
C++ Cookbook
N EXT
4.11. Removing a Su
pattern in source.
Solution
Use the find member function to locate successive instances of the substring you are looking for.
Example 4-17 contains a simple nthSubstr function.
Example 4-17. Locate the nth version of a substring
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int nthSubstr(int n, const string& s,
const string& p) {
string::size_type i = s.find(p);
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int j;
for (j = 1; j < n && i != string::npos; ++j)
i = s.find(p, i+1); // Find the next occurrence
if (j == n)
return(i);
else
return(-1);
}
int main() {
string s = "the wind, the sea, the sky, the trees";
string p = "the";
cout << nthSubstr(1, s, p) << '\n';
cout << nthSubstr(2, s, p) << '\n';
cout << nthSubstr(5, s, p) << '\n';
}
Discussion
There are a couple of improvements you can make to nthSubstr as it is presented in
Example 4-17. First, you can make it generic by making it a function template instead of an
ordinary function. Second, you can add a parameter to account for substrings that may or may
not overlap with themselves. By "overlap," I mean that the beginning of the string matches part of
the end of the same string, as in the word "abracadabra," where the last four characters are the
same as the first four. Example 4-18 demonstrates this.
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cout <<
<<
cout <<
<<
See Also
Recipe 4.9
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