Lua Pattern matching
Syntax
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string.find(str, pattern [, init [, plain]]) -- Returns start and end index of match in str
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string.match(str, pattern [, index]) -- Matches a pattern once (starting at index)
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string.gmatch(str, pattern) -- Returns a function that iterates through all matches in str
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string.gsub(str, pattern, repl [, n]) -- Replaces substrings (up to a max of n times)
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.represents all characters -
%arepresents all letters -
%lrepresents all lowercase letters -
%urepresents all uppercase letters -
%drepresents all digits -
%xrepresents all hexadecimal digits -
%srepresents all whitespace characters -
%prepresents all punctuation characters -
%grepresents all printable characters except space -
%crepresents all control characters -
[set]represents the class which is the union of all characters in set. -
[^set]represents the complement of set -
*greedy match 0 or more occurrences of previous character class -
+greedy match 1 or more occurrences of previous character class -
-lazy match 0 or more occurrences of previous character class -
?match exactly 0 or 1 occurrence of previous character class
Remarks
Throughout some examples, the notation (<string literal>):function <string literal> is used, which is equivalent to string.function(<string literal>, <string literal>) because all strings have a metatable with the __index field set to the string table.
