Lua need to split at comma

Question

I've googled and I'm just not getting it. Seems like such a simple function, but of course Lua doesn't have it.

In Python I would do

string = "cat,dog" one, two = string.split(",") 

and then I would have two variables, one = cat. two = dog

How do I do this in Lua!?

Answer 1

Try this

str = 'cat,dog' for word in string.gmatch(str, '([^,]+)') do     print(word) end 

'[^,]' means "everything but the comma, the + sign means "one or more characters". The parenthesis create a capture (not really needed in this case).

Answer 2

If you can use libraries, the answer is (as often in Lua) to use Penlight.

If Penlight is too heavy for you and you just want to split a string with a single comma like in your example, you can do something like this:

string = "cat,dog" one, two = string:match("([^,]+),([^,]+)")