String.gmatch

Available since: Gideros 2011.6
Class: string

Description

Returns an iterator function that, each time it is called, returns the next captures from pattern pat over string s. If pattern specifies no captures, then the whole match is produced in each call.

(function) = string.gmatch(s,pat)

note: the gfind method was deprecated in Lua 5.1, and in Lua 5.2, it was replaced by gmatch

Parameters

s: (string) string where to look for patterns
pat: (string) pattern to look for

Return values

Returns (function) iterator function

Examples

The following loop will iterate over all the words from string s, printing one per line

s = "hello world from Lua"
for w in string.gmatch(s, "%a+") do
   print(w)
end
-- if you want to print each letter individually rather than sequences just remove the '+' sign

The next example collects all pairs key=value from the given string into a table

t = {}
s = "from=world, to=Lua"
for k, v in string.gmatch(s, "(%w+)=(%w+)") do
   t[k] = v
end

For this function, a '^' at the start of a pattern does not work as an anchor, as this would prevent the iteration.

---

• String
• String.byte
• String.char
• String.dump
• String.find
• String.format
• String.gmatch
• String.gsub
• String.len
• String.lower
• String.match
• String.pack
• String.packsize
• String.rep
• String.reverse
• String.split
• String.sub
• String.unpack
• String.upper

---

---

• Main Page
• Lua API
• Main API
• Plugins