I think you should be misunderstanding, or else it is my fault. i suppose to post my coding and lets you all expertise and checking the error for me. However, the system now is workable for space. one more question is if i would like to get some particular word, lets say 3rd word from the sentence. then what should i add inside? the following is the coding: #include using std::cout; using std::endl; using std::cin; #include int main() { char string[256]; char *tokenPtr; cout << "Enter sentence\n"; cin.getline(string,sizeof(string),'\n'); cout << "The string to be tokenized is:\n" << string << "\n\nThe tokens are:\n"; tokenPtr = strtok( string, " " ); while ( tokenPtr != NULL ) { cout << tokenPtr << '\n'; tokenPtr = strtok( NULL, " " ); } return 0; }