Doesn't matter in scanf

Question

Imagine the following:

you read in a line with scanf() , but you only need some of the data in a line.

Is there an easy way to throw away extraneous information without losing the ability to check if there is relevant data so that you can easily discard invalid rows?

Example:

 const char* store = "Get: 15 beer 30 coke\n"; const char* dealer= "Get: 8 heroine 5 coke\n"; const char* scream= "Get: f* beer 10 coke\n"; 

I want to take the first string, but forget about beer, because beer is yuckie. I want to reject the second and third lines because they obviously do not match the lists for 7/11;

So, I was thinking about the following construction:

 char* bId = new char[16]; char* cId = new char[16]; int cokes; sscanf([string here], "Get: %d %s %d %s\n", [don't care], bId, &cokes, cId); 

That way, I would keep the format check, but what would I set for [it doesn't matter] that doesn't make the compiler whine?

Of course, I could just make a variable that I will not use later, but this is not a question of this question. Also checking the left and right sides separately is an obvious solution that I am not looking for here.

So, is there a way to not care, but still check the line type in scanf and friends?

Answer 1

Use the * character as a character to suppress destination after%

Example:

  sscanf([string here], "Get: %*d %s %d %s\n", bId, &cokes, cId);