Having trouble using string.gsub() with table replacement

[notKwabi]

Hello! I am tying to use string.gsub() with a table of key value pairs to replace pieces of strings
within a longer string.

So far, the issue I’m having is that the string isn’t being replaced. The string I want replaced are “” and “” which I have as keys in the the table.

How would I go about replacing these characters with other strings using a table that holds the
characters to be replaced as keys and substitutions as values? I also would want to replace “<m#NUMBER>” & “</m#NUMBER>”, with “#NUMBER” being an actual integer (i.e , , , , etc… )

Thanks in advance

Example of issue

local myString = "Hello! My name is <m>John Doe</m>" 
local patternReplaceTable = { 
    ["<m>"] = "[RED]";
    ["</m>"] = "[/RED]";
}
local formattedString = string.gsub(myString, "%w+" , patternReplaceTable)
print(formattedString) -- would return the same string

[TheHobber1712 (Hobber)]

Hello!

It doesn’t replace it, because the pattern %w+ only recognizes letters or numbers, however, < and > are punctuation characters, thereby %p is used.

But, you see, the whole thing is a little bit more complex, since %p+ wouldn’t capture any letter between the <>. A Pattern what I found working was <[^%s]+>. This will capture the <, every literal which is not a whitespace, and the >. This should also get “#NUMBER”. If you want to read up on String Patterns, I will reference to the Roblox Guide, since they can be really useful when used correctly.

However, the patternReplaceTable will still not recognize the “#NUMBER”. Luckily, the table can be replaced by a function like this:

local formattedString = string.gsub(myString, "<[^%s]+>", function(text)
	local replacement = ""
	
	-- Do replacing here
	
	return replacement
end)

There you can process further.

Hope I could help!

[notKwabi]

Hi. Thank you for informing me about the pattern character classes.

NOTE:
For the initial post, the “” were meant to be "<m>" & "</m>" & (i.e , , ,) was meant to be (i.e <m1>, </m1>, <m2> </m2>, etc). I didn’t know the forum would make them invisible.

So far your method does work for the given example string, "Hello! My name is <m>John Doe</m>". But I think the pattern doesn’t cover for when the tags "<m>" & "</m>" are followed by numbers. For example, the string "Gained <m>10</m> experience points" would return "<m>10</m>" as the txt parameter rather than <m> & </m>.

Code show casing issue:

local markupBegin = [[<font color = "rgb(255,0,0)">]]
local markupEnd = [[</font>]]
local myString = "Gained <m>10</m> experience points" 
local changeTable = {
    ["<m1>"] = markupBegin;
    ["</m1>"] = markupEnd;
}

string.gsub(myString,"<[^%s]+>", function(txt)
    local replacement = ""

    print(txt) -- Would return <m>10</m> instead of <m> & </m> seperate 


    return replacement
end)

--[[
Goal would be to use string.gsub to get the following string;
"Gained <font color = "rgb(255,0,0)">10</font> experience points". 
]]

I’ll continue to mess around with the character class combinations, but anyone knows of one that will cover this issue please let me know.

Thanks again.