String.split is not working | adding a string's characters into a table

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1

I want to insert a string’s characters into a table, I discovered that using
string.split , an array is created of the string’s characters (as it is separated by “,” by default).

Here is what I came up with :

local str = “abcd”

  local cont = {}
   
   local array = string.split(str)--it would be a,b,c,d right?
       print(#array)--> 1 , why 1 ! isnt it supposed to separate a string?
         for i = 1, #array do 
         cont[i] = array[i]
      print(cont[2])--> nil,where I want it to print "b"
  end
My alternative (still defunct) code : 
       for i = 1, #str do
	        cont[i] = string.split(str)[i]
	      print(cont[i])
    end

Does someone know what the appropriate method to add all characters of a string into a table is?

2

string.split makes an array of the contents of the specified str delimited by , as default.
The str would have to contain a,b,c,d for you to get an array of size 4

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3

then what would be an alternative to do this ? Does a post like this exist? If so, then please link it and i’ll close the topic.

How would you iterate through the characters in a string, an example would help.

4

you would need to iterate through the string character by character using string.sub

5

here is what I figured out, but it doesn’t work :

      local str = "abcd"
      local cont = {}
    
    for i = 1,#str do
	   table.insert(cont,string.sub(str,i))
     end

 print(#cont)--> 4

but what is inserted is a number

6

nevermind I figured out how to iterate, thanks anyways

  local str = "abcd"
  local cont = {}
   
   for i = 1,#str do
	      table.insert(cont,string.sub(str,i,i))
	   end
 
   print(#cont)--> 4

  print(table.unpack(cont)-- a b c d
7

You can simply use string.split(str, "") to achieve the exact result you’re looking for. The split function must split characters by a string, so supplying an empty string will split every character up (technically "" is between every character).

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8

string.sub(str, Startingposition, Endingposition) so string.sub(“abcd”,1,1) would be a
atring.sub(“abcd”,2,2) would be b etc
Do some prints in the loop by setting a variable like
extractedCharacter = string.sub(“abcd”,1,1)
print(extractedCharacter)
table.insert(cont,extractedCharacter)

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9

If you want to iterate over the contents of a string then you should use gmatch and search for matches of any one character as opposed to getting a substring at the start and end index of the same value. It’s much cleaner and proper.

local sepString = "abcd"
local content = {}

for letter in sepString:gmatch(".") do
    table.insert(content, letter)
end

print(table.unpack(content)) -- a b c d
1 Like
10

I am sorry but I am confused by that. I thought the gmatch pattern in your example would not find anything as there is not . in the string. Is the . special in some way?

11

. is simply the string pattern for any character.

12

Dot is a character class representative of any character (alphanumeric, symbol, anything). I don’t use it in a set, therefore the pattern specifies that any single found character is valid to be matched.

gmatch is a generator for a for loop. It allows me to run iterations for every match of whatever pattern I’ve specified.

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