I'm sorry, I should have mentioned that I am using the Boost Spirit library and I am asking for help with the grammer for the parser. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Al Gambardella Date: Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 4:50 PM Subject: How to skip leading characters To: boost-users@lists.boost.org I have an input text file that I read line by line into a standard string. Each line has the following format: Name1 00 12 3a 4c ff … Name2 33 55 5c dd ee … How do create the grammer to skip the leading NameX on each line and put the hex digits into a vector? If the lines had a more complex format such that anything could appear before NameX for example: Bla bla bla : 0a .bb cc NameX 01 22 aa dd 33 44 50 00 … How could I once again get the hex digits after the name into a vector?

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Al Gambardella wrote:

I have an input text file that I read line by line into a standard string.

Each line has the following format:

Name1  00 12 3a 4c ff …

Name2  33 55 5c dd ee …

How do create the grammer to skip the leading NameX on each line and put the hex digits into a vector?

If the lines had a more complex format such that anything could appear before NameX for example:

Bla bla bla : 0a .bb cc  NameX 01 22 aa dd 33 44 50 00 …

How could I once again get the hex digits after the name into a vector?

This is all easy and fast to do using Spirit2.1 (Boost.Spirit). Look at it, if you need help with it, ask on the boost-spirit mailing list. This is not it, but with Spirit2.1, perhaps something like: omit[(char_-("Name">>int_)) >> "Name" >> int_ >> blank] >> +(blank >> hex_) Which would fill up a vector, and you can specialize the int_parser of hex for a specific type as well, like char, then you could fill up a string. Ask on the Spirit mailing list for more info.