Is there an "or" pattern in string manipulation?

[NexusKorthos]

Hello, im making a command console and im trying to find a way to get words and quotes as arguments.

Im using gmatch to get the arguments, but im only able to either get words or quotes and not both.

local QuotePattern = '".+"'
local WordPattern = "[^%s]+"

local Arguments = {}
for Word in gmatch(Message, WordPattern) do
	insert(Arguments, Word)
end

Is there a way to combine the patterns so the gmatch function gives me either words or quotes in a segregated fashion? I really don’t want to make complicated loops.

For example this should be the result:

local Message = 'ban NexusKorthos "You are cheating noob" 5'
local Arguments = {
	"ban", --word
	"NexusKorthos", --word
	"You are cheating noob", --quote
	"5" --word
}]]

[kexy123]

Unfortunately, there is no or pattern (in the way you defined it) in Regular Expression.

Loops may be required in order to achieve the solution. The solution will be similar to @boatbomber’s Lexer for Lua.

local Quote = '".-"' -- "aaaa" "bbb" might return "aaaa" "bbb" since the + would try to get the most text. We're using - to try to get the least text.
local Quote_Incomplete = '".+' -- In the event that the command doesn't have their quotes closed correctly
local Word = "[^%s]+"
local Whitespace = "%s+"

local Matches = {
	-- Formatted as: {text, identifier}
	{Quote, "quote"},
	{Quote_Incomplete, "quote_incomplete"},

	{Word, "word"},
	{Whitespace, "whitespace"}
}

local function SeparateCommand(Command)
	local Tokens = {}
	local Index = 1
	local Length = #Command
	while Index <= Length do
		for _, Match in ipairs(Matches) do -- Loop through the table in the specific order it has been ordered as. Some things might break if they weren't ordered correctly.
			local IndexStart, IndexEnd = string.find(Command, "^" .. Match[1], Index)
			if not IndexEnd then continue end -- Indicates that the string didn't get a match. If so, continue to the next one.
			Index = IndexEnd + 1
			if Match[2] == "whitespace" then continue end -- Don't include whitespaces
			table.insert(Tokens, {string.sub(Command, IndexStart, IndexEnd), Match[2]})
		end
	end
	return Tokens
end

Using the SeparateCommand function on the string ban NexusKorthos "You are cheating noob" 5, you get this table:

In a format where the first item in each table is the text, and the second item in each table is the type.