reading integers from a string - string

Question

I want to read a line from a file, initialize an array from that line and then display the integers.
Why is is not reading the five integers in the line? I want to get output 1 2 3 4 5, i have 1 1 1 1 1
open Array;;
open Scanf;;
let print_ints file_name =
let file = open_in file_name in
let s = input_line(file) in
let n = ref 5 in
let arr = Array.init !n (fun i -> if i < !n then sscanf s "%d" (fun a -> a) else 0) in
let i = ref 0 in
while !i < !n do
print_int (Array.get arr !i);
print_string " ";
i := !i + 1;
done;;
print_ints "string_ints.txt";;
My file is just: 1 2 3 4 5

Answer 1

You might want to try the following approach. Split your string into a list of substrings representing numbers. This answer describes one way of doing so. Then use the resulting function in your print_ints function.
let ints_of_string s =
List.map int_of_string (Str.split (Str.regexp " +") s)
let print_ints file_name =
let file = open_in file_name in
let s = input_line file in
let ints = ints_of_string s in
List.iter (fun i -> print_int i; print_char ' ') ints;
close_in file
let _ = print_ints "string_ints.txt"
When compiling, pass str.cma or str.cmxa as an argument (see this answer for details on compilation):
$ ocamlc str.cma print_ints.ml
Another alternative would be using the Scanf.bscanf function -- this question, contains an example (use with caution).
The Scanf.sscanf function may not be particularly suitable for this task.
An excerpt from the OCaml manual:
the scanf facility is not intended for heavy duty lexical analysis and parsing. If it appears not expressive enough for your needs, several alternative exists: regular expressions (module Str), stream parsers, ocamllex-generated lexers, ocamlyacc-generated parsers
There is though a way to parse a string of ints using Scanf.sscanf (which I wouldn't recommend):
let rec int_list_of_string s =
try
Scanf.sscanf s
"%d %[0-9-+ ]"
(fun n rest_str -> n :: int_list_of_string rest_str)
with
| End_of_file | Scanf.Scan_failure _ -> []
The trick here is to represent the input string s as a part which is going to be parsed into a an integer (%d) and the rest of the string using the range format: %[0-9-+ ]", which will match the rest of the string, containing only decimal digits 0-9, the - and + signs, and whitespace .