How to find and replace multiple substrings in a string

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#1

Hello! I am trying to create a module script that:

  1. finds 1 or more substring(s) from a given string
  2. replaces the substring(s) with a different substring for each one
  3. returns the modified string, so I can use it on other scripts.

However, I am a bit stuck on it, so can anyone tell me how to fix it?

Here is the code:

local module = {
	["Dictionary"] = {
		["Cat"] = {
			"Ice Cream",
			"Cookie",
			"Cake"
		["Dog"] = {
			"Pizza",
			"Hamburger",
			"Taco"
		}
	}
}

function lower(str)
	return str:lower()
end

function random(min, max)
	return math.random(min, max)
end

function module:ReplaceWords(givenString)
	local loweredString = lower(givenString)

	if loweredString:find("cat") then
		local cat = module.Dictionary.Cat

		local newString1 = string.gsub(loweredString, "cat", cat[random(1, #cat)

		if loweredString:find("dog") then
			local dog = module.Dictionary.Dog
			
			local newString2 = string.gsub(loweredString, "dog", dog[random(1, #dog)

			return newString2

		else

			return newString1

		end

	else

		return loweredString

	end

end

return module

please help

#2

You can use the gsub function on strings to run functions on patterns within the strings.

Patterns here: Programming in Lua : 20.2


local string = "I think the sky is blue, just blue."

function replaceFn(word)
    if word == "blue" then
        return "red"
    else
        return word
    end
end

local replacedString = string:gsub("%a+", replaceFn)

print(replacedString)
#3

so im guessing this iterates through each word of the string?

#4

Yes. Other useful patterns are ‘.’ for every character and ‘%d+’ for every number. To iterate over a word, ‘%a’ looks for a letter, and ‘+’ lets it look for multiple letters next to each other.

#5

i used this for my script and it worked so thank you

#6

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