sscanf Parses input from a string according to a format mixedsscanf stringstr stringformat stringvar1 The function sscanf is the input analog of printf. sscanf reads from the string str and interprets it according to the specified format. If only two parameters were passed to this function, the values parsed will be returned as an array. Any whitespace in the format string matches any whitespace in the input string. This means that even a tab \t in the format string can match a single space character in the input string. If optional parameters are passed, the function will return the number of assigned values. The optional parameters must be passed by reference. $first $last \n"; ]]> See also fscanf, printf, and sprintf.