Turning my string list into a table?

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#1

I have a string with a list of items set up like this:

Cats

Dogs

Ferrets

Keep in mind I’m separating the items by a new line character. The problem is, I need to take each item out of the list and put it into a table or something. E.g. {"Cats", "Dogs", "Ferrets"}. I’ve done some fooling around and I can’t seem to get this to work.

I’ve looked at these threads trying to figure out how to accomplish this:

How do you gmatch a string into a list?

They gave me a good starting point, but still no dice. Unfortunately I don’t have much experience with string manipulation like this so I’m kind of lost. Help?

#2

In your current case, there are two ways you can search for these items you could either search for alphanumeric characters (%w) or non-new line characters ([^\n]), this would be an example for the former

local str = [[Cats

Dogs

Ferrets]]

for anim in str:gmatch("%w+") do
   print(anim,"hi")
end

The caveat to this is that it only finds alphanumeric (numbers + letters) characters in the string, while punctuations, and etc. are left out, if you wish to include those, conside this:

local str = [[Cats

Dogs

Ferrets]]

for anim in str:gmatch("[^\n]+") do
   print(anim,"hi")
end

If you want to learn more, i would strongly suggest checking out the lua users wiki or the lua pil.

String Library; Lua Users Wiki

lua “magic” characters

lua pil

1 Like
#3

string.split is what you’re looking for.

If you wanted to split by newlines,

local stringsplitting = "line1\nline2\line3"
local list = stringsplitting:split"\n"

local function splitbynewline(str)
    return str:split"\n"
end
3 Likes
#4 
local str = [[
	Cats
	
	Dogs
	
	Ferrets
]]
local tab = {}
for w in str:gmatch('%a+') do
	tab[#tab + 1] = w
end
print(unpack(tab))

Cats Dogs Ferrets

You’re searching the string for every occurrence of the %a pattern, which represents an uppercase or lowercase letter. Then you add the + to capture the entire word. The string pattern reference page is very helpful for stuff like this

1 Like
#5

This worked like a charm! Thanks to everyone who helped.