WoW API: strsplit
Splits a string using a delimiter (optionally: into a specified number of pieces)
s1, s2, s3 ... sn = strsplit("delimiter", "subject"[, pieces])
Arguments
- (delimiter, subject)
- delimiter
- String - Delimiter (every single byte of the string will be used to split; see details)
- subject
- String - String to split
- pieces
- integer - Optional argument designating the number of pieces to make.
Returns
A list of strings. Not a table. If the delimiter is not found in the subject string, the whole subject string will be returned.
Example
local a, b, c = strsplit(" ", "a b c d", 3)
Result
a = "a" b = "b" c = "c d"
Details
Again, note that the return from strsplit is a list of values, not a table. To get a table, use e.g.:
local tbl = { strsplit(delimiter, subject) }
Also note that strsplit uses a raw string as delimited, not a pattern, so it's not particularily well-suited for e.g. commandline arguments, where it should be ok to use multiple spaces. To extract whitespace-separated arguments, you can use e.g.
local tbl = {}
for v in string.gmatch(" this has lots of space ", "[^ ]+") do
tinsert(tbl, v)
end
Additionally note that the delimiter defines all bytes that will split the string, e.g.:
strsplit("ab", "1a2b3") -- => "1", "2", "3"
or
strsplit("ab", "1ab2") -- => "1", "", "2"
Nota Bene: This function does not handle embedded NUL characters ("\0") gracefully. If you need a unique "signpost" character embedded in your strings to be split apart later, try the ASCII bell character ("\a"). This won't show up in the game, and strsplit handles it just fine.