Question

I’m working on a project where the end-users will be running Lua, and communicating with a server written in Python, but I can’t find a way of doing what I need to do in Lua.

I give the program an input of:

recipient command,argument,argument sender

I get an output of a list containing:

{"recipient", "command,argument,argument", "sender"}

Then, separate those items into individual variables. After that, I’d separate command,argument,argument into another list and separate those into variables again.

How I did it in Python:

test = "server searching,123,456 Guy" #Example
msglist = test.split()
recipient = msglist.pop(0)
msg = msglist.pop(0)
id = msglist.pop(0)

cmdArgList = cmd.split(',')
cmd = cmdArgList.pop(0)
while len(cmdArgList) > 0:
    argument = 1
    locals()["arg" + str(argument)]
    argument += 1

Answer 1

The question in your title is asking for something very specific: the Lua equivalent of getting a value from an array and removing it. That would be:

theTable = {};  --Fill this as needed
local theValue = theTable[1];  --Get the value
table.remove(theTable, 1);     --Remove the value from the table.

The question you ask in your post seems very open-ended.