SAS/C Library Reference, Vol. 1

stcpma -- Anchored Pattern Match

SYNOPSIS

 #include <lcstring.h>

 int stcpma(char *str, const char *pat);

DESCRIPTION

stcpma tests the input string addressed by str to determine whether it starts with a substring matching the pattern that pat points to. The search terminates if a match is not found at the beginning of the input string.

The pattern format can be specified using the symbols +, *, and ?, as described in the previous discussion of the stcpm function.

Although the stcpm and stcpma functions use the same pattern-matching notation, stcpma is different from stcpm in two ways:

stcpma looks for a match to the search pattern (pat) only at the beginning of the input string (str). The stcpm function scans the entire string for the first match, which may or may not occur at the beginning.
stcpma does not take a third argument.

RETURN VALUE

If it is successful, stcpma returns the length of the character sequence that matches the search pattern, or it returns 0 if no match is found.

In comparison to stcpm, both stcpm and stcpma can find the search pattern William A*.* *Tell in the following input string:

 "William A. Tell, Margaret Fairfax-Tell"

However, stcpma cannot find the search pattern in this string:

 "Margaret Fairfax-Tell, William A. Tell"

And stcpma cannot find it in this string, which contains an initial blank:

 " William A. Tell"

EXAMPLE

  #include <lcstring.h>
  #include <stdio.h>

  main()
  {
     static char *sps[ ]  = {
        "William Tellas  Sr.",           /* no middle initial  */
        "William A Tella      ",         /* middle initial     */
        "William AAA. Tell!! ---",       /* initial and period */
        "William S. Teller; Then..",     /* wrong initial      */
     };
     int length, i;

        /* Find William Tell, whether or not he used his       */
        /*  middle initial.                                    */
     for (i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
        if (length = stcpma(sps[i], "William A*.* *Tell"))
           printf("%d. Match result = %.*sn", i,length, sps[i]);
        else
           printf("%d. No match for string = %sn",i,sps[i]);
     }
  }

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