Dirt simple method, though probably pretty inefficient, and doesn't take advantage of the STL:
(Note that I didn't try to compile this)
unsigned GetFileNumber(std::string &s)
{
const std::string extension = ".dat";
/// get starting position - first character to the left of the file extension
/// in a real implementation, you'd want to verify that the string actually contains
/// the correct extension.
int i = (int)(s.size() - extension.size() - 1);
unsigned sum = 0;
int tensMultiplier = 1;
while (i >= 0)
{
/// get the integer value of this digit - subtract (int)'0' rather than
/// using the ASCII code of `0` directly for clarity. Optimizer converts
/// it to a literal immediate at compile time, anyway.
int digit = s[i] - (int)'0';
/// if this is a valid numeric character
if (digit >= 0 && digit <= 9)
{
/// add the digit's value, adjusted for it's place within the numeric
/// substring, to the accumulator
sum += digit * tensMultiplier;
/// set the tens place multiplier for the next digit to the left.
tensMultiplier *= 10;
}
else
{
break;
}
i--;
}
return sum;
}
If you need it as a string, just append the found digits to a result string rather than accumulating their values in sum.
This also assumes that .dat is the last part of your string. If not, I'd start at the end, count left until you find a numeric character, and then start the above loop. This is nice because it's O(n), but may not be as clear as the regex or find approaches.
xxguaranteed to be only two characters? Or can it be any number of characters?std::atoion the result.std::regexto parse the string, and extract the number part? Otherwise a simplestd::string::substr()might be sufficient.