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From: Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Parsing a line into strings
Date: 1998/07/09
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Date: 1998-07-09T00:00:00+00:00
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"If you're using GNAT, the package GNAT.Spitbol has such a feature."

Spitbol is a rather large hammer to crack a rather small nut.
I have a package that will do what you want to do. It is at...

    http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~dale/software/index.html


>From the package spec...

  function Select_Field (
      Item            : String;
      Field_No        : Integer;
      Field_Separator : Character) return String;

   --  Returns a string that represents the nth string in the field.
   --  The 'first of the return string is always set to one
   --  Fields are separated by the supplied character
   --  E.g.
   --
   --     Field ("cat:dog:mouse", 3, ':')
   --
   --  would result in the string
   --
   --     "mouse"
   --
   --  A -ve value indicates searching from the RHS.
   --
   --  E.g.
   --
   --     Field ("cat:dog:mouse", -1, ':')
   --
   --  would result in the string
   --     "mouse"


Dale