How do I replace everything else in a string to spaces except the word "game"

[Mr_Shqah]

1. What do you want to achieve? Keep it simple and clear!

I want to replace everything else in a string to a space except the word “game”.

2. What is the issue? Include screenshots / videos if possible!

I don’t know how.

3. What solutions have you tried so far? Did you look for solutions on the Developer Hub?

I searched in google but I didn’t find an answer.

For example:
I want to replace everything else in this string “Hello game” to spaces except the word “game”.

The result I want: "ㅤㅤ game"

if there were 50 characters behind the word “game” then I want to add 50 spaces behind the word “game”

[mroaan (NightCode)]

What are you trying to achieve by doing this? Maybe theres a better way than doing that

[Mr_Shqah]

I am trying to make A GUI where you can Execute code, And I am trying to change the color of the word “game” to blue so it looks like you are coding in studio.

Note: I will be the only one that can Execute code.

[mroaan (NightCode)]

Why do you need spaces for that?

[EgizianoEG (Egiziano)]

You can accomplish this by splitting the target string using the `string.split` function, which takes a string and a separator as input and returns a table of substrings. In this case, we use the word `game` as the separator parameter to split the target string into separate substrings.

After that, we will be iterating through the returned substrings table and replace every substring with its corresponding number of spaces which is being done by getting the length of the substring and then repeat the space character using it as the number of repetitions in the `string.rep` function.

Finally, we reform the string using the table.concat function and giving it the `game` word as a separator parameter (that we had removed earlier using `string.split` function) to create a new string which have only the `game` word while other characters are replaced with spaces.

Here’s an example of how you might do it:

local function Highlight(Str: string)
    if not string.find(Str, "game") then
        return Str  -- early exit.
    end

    local Splitted = string.split(Str, "game")
    for i, SubString in ipairs(Splitted) do
        Splitted[i] = string.rep(" ", #SubString)
    end

    return table.concat(Splitted, "game")
end

local Str = "Hello game game game game"
local Str_2 = "Hello! This is illegal text. game is not"
print(Highlight(Str)) -- outputs "      game game game game"
print(Highlight(Str_2)) -- outputs "                             game       "

[Mr_Shqah]

Thank you!

But I want it to keep more than one word.

For example:
I want to replace everything else in this string “Hello. game print” to spaces except the word “game” and the word “print”.

[Mr_Shqah]

Nvm, I fixed it.

Thank you for helping me!

[EgizianoEG (Egiziano)]

Here you go:

local function Highlight(Str: string)
    local MainPattern = "([^ ]+)"   -- that pattern matches any sequence of characters except spaces.
    local PuncPattern = "(%w+)(%p)" -- this one is used to remove any left punctuation (like a colon after the word "game,") using two captures, one for the Exempted word an another for any tailing punctuation.
    local Replacement = " "
    local Exempted = {
        "game", "print"
    }

    Str = Str:gsub(MainPattern, function(Capture)
        for _, Exception in ipairs(Exempted) do
            if string.match(Capture, Exception) then
                return Capture
            end
        end
        return string.rep(Replacement, #Capture)
    end)

    Str = string.gsub(Str, PuncPattern, "%1")   -- gets rid of tailing punctuation by just keeping the first captured group of the pattern.

    return Str
end

local Str = "Hello game print test print"
local Str_2 = "game and game, print and game, print only..."
warn(Highlight(Str))    -- returns: "      game print      print"
warn(Highlight(Str_2))  -- returns: "game     game print     game print        "

This approach uses the string patterns and the string function `gsub`. Also, you can add any other word to the Exempted table which would be ignored in the patterns.

@Mr_Shqah

Nvm, I fixed it.

Thank you for helping me!

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