Extract trailing int from string containing other characters - c++11

Question

I have a problem in regards of extracting signed int from string in c++.
Assuming that i have a string of images1234, how can i extract the 1234 from the string without knowing the position of the last non numeric character in C++.
FYI, i have try stringstream as well as lexical_cast as suggested by others through the post but stringstream returns 0 while lexical_cast stopped working.
int main()
{
string virtuallive("Images1234");
//stringstream output(virtuallive.c_str());
//int i = stoi(virtuallive);
//stringstream output(virtuallive);
int i;
i = boost::lexical_cast<int>(virtuallive.c_str());
//output >> i;
cout << i << endl;
return 0;
}

Answer 1

How can i extract the 1234 from the string without knowing the position of the last non numeric character in C++?
You can't. But the position is not hard to find:
auto last_non_numeric = input.find_last_not_of("1234567890");
char* endp = &input[0];
if (last_non_numeric != std::string::npos)
endp += last_non_numeric + 1;
if (*endp) { /* FAILURE, no number on the end */ }
auto i = strtol(endp, &endp, 10);
if (*endp) {/* weird FAILURE, maybe the number was really HUGE and couldn't convert */}

Answer 2

Another possibility would be to put the string into a stringstream, then read the number from the stream (after imbuing the stream with a locale that classifies everything except digits as white space).
// First the desired facet:
struct digits_only: std::ctype<char> {
digits_only(): std::ctype<char>(get_table()) {}
static std::ctype_base::mask const* get_table() {
// everything is white-space:
static std::vector<std::ctype_base::mask>
rc(std::ctype<char>::table_size,std::ctype_base::space);
// except digits, which are digits
std::fill(&rc['0'], &rc['9'], std::ctype_base::digit);
// and '.', which we'll call punctuation:
rc['.'] = std::ctype_base::punct;
return &rc[0];
}
};
Then the code to read the data:
std::istringstream virtuallive("Images1234");
virtuallive.imbue(locale(locale(), new digits_only);
int number;
// Since we classify the letters as white space, the stream will ignore them.
// We can just read the number as if nothing else were there:
virtuallive >> number;
This technique is useful primarily when the stream contains a substantial amount of data, and you want all the data in that stream to be interpreted in the same way (e.g., only read numbers, regardless of what else it might contain).