Spaces and Tabs in Scan From String

[LandBelenky]

Hi all.  I'm sure this question has been answered before, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.

I'm having trouble with the scan from string function.  My format string specifies tabs (\t) as the delimiters between multiple parameters, however it's also using spaces.  As a result, a string which contains spaces causes it to fail on the next parameter because it's expecting a number but sees instead the remainder of the string.

Please see the attached.

If I replace the spaces with a token (in this case #SPACE#), I can read the string and the numbers correctly.  Then, I have to re-replace the tokens with spaces after reading it back.

Therefore, what I'm looking for is a way to specify the tab charater as a delimiter, but not the space character.

thanks for your help.

[ben64]

Instead  of %s use the character set [a-zA-Z0-9 ] (with a space at the end).

Ben64

[LandBelenky]

That doesn't seem to work at all.

This is now my full format string:  %f\t%f\t[a-zA-Z0-9 ]\t%f\n

The Format Into String is now demanding a double input where the alphanumeric characters should go.

The scan from string gives only three outputs, all numeric. 

Instead of treating [a-zA-Z0-9 ] as an indicator of a string, it's treating it as a literal string and inserting it as is.

[ben64]

I forgot to specify, you need to put the % before the character set.

Ben64

[LandBelenky]

That does make a big difference.

But what if I want to include all printable characters, not just alphanumerics?

[nathand · Accepted solution]

I would use %[^\t] in this case, which will read any character that isn't a tab.

[LandBelenky]

Okay, that seems to work.  But now I'm confused.

Why does \t match both tabs and spaces, but ^\t reads spaces but not tabs?

[nathand]

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LandBelenky wrote:

Why does \t match both tabs and spaces, but ^\t reads spaces but not tabs?

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It would be more accurate to say that %s doesn't match spaces.  Your original code fails trying to match the tab after the %s.

[ben64]

Have a look at "Format specifiers" in the LabVIEW help (in index search, format specifiers -> syntax elements).

Ben64