Question

I have a string stored in sqlite database and I’ve assigned it to a var, e.g. string

string = “First line and string. This should be another string in a new line”

I want to split this string into two separated strings, the dot (.) must be replace with (\n) new line char

At the moment I’m stuck and any help would be great!!

for row in db:nrows("SELECT * FROM contents WHERE section='accounts'") do
    tabledata[int] = string.gsub(row.contentName, "%.", "\n")
    int = int+1
end

I tried the other questions posted here in stachoverflow but with zero luck

Answer 1

Are you looking to actually split the string into two different string objects? If so maybe this can help. It’s a function I wrote to add some additional functionality to the standard string library. You can use it as-is or rename it to what ever you like.

--[[

    string.split (s, p)
    ====================================================================
    Splits the string [s] into substrings wherever pattern [p] occurs.

    Returns: a table of substrings or, if no match is made [nil].

--]]
string.split = function(s, p)
    local temp = {}
    local index = 0
    local last_index = string.len(s)

    while true do
        local i, e = string.find(s, p, index)

        if i and e then
            local next_index = e + 1
            local word_bound = i - 1
            table.insert(temp, string.sub(s, index, word_bound))
            index = next_index
        else            
            if index > 0 and index <= last_index then
                table.insert(temp, string.sub(s, index, last_index))
            elseif index == 0 then
                temp = nil
            end
            break
        end
    end

    return temp
end

Using it is very simple, it returns a tables of strings.

Lua 5.1.4  Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> s = "First line and string. This should be another string in a new line"
> t = string.split(s, "%.")
> print(table.concat(t, "\n"))
First line and string
 This should be another string in a new line
> print(table.maxn(t))
2