Finds the first character in a string that matches any character in another string

#include <string.h>
char *strpbrk ( const char *s1 , const char *s2  );

The strpbrk( ) function returns a pointer to the first character in the string addressed by s1 that matches any character contained in the string addressed by s2, or a null pointer if the two strings have no characters in common.

Example

char *story = "He shouted: \"What? I can't hear you!\"\n";
char separators[ ] = " \t\n.:?!\"";
char *start = story, *end = NULL;
char words[16][16];         // An array of char arrays to collect words in.
int i = 0;

while ( i < 16 && ( end = strpbrk( start, separators ) ) != NULL )
{
  if ( end != start )       // If the separator wasn't the first character,
  {                         // then save a word in an array.
    strncpy( words[i], start, end - start );
    words[i][end - start] = '\0'; // And terminate it.
    i++;
  }
  start = end + 1;                // Next strpbrk call starts with
}                                 // the character after this separator.
puts( story );
for ( int j = 0 ; j < i ; j++ )
  puts( words[j] );

This program prints each of the words it has collected on a new line:

He
shouted
What
I
can't
hear
you

See Also

strchr( ), strrchr( ), strstr( ), strcspn( ), strtok( ), wcspbrk( )