Reading character by character

Okay, I'm creating a system where it can save all of the values of the screen colours and text values (i.e. background colour, foreground colour and the text in the pixel). How would I go about reading a string character by character? This would be used to load in a save file and then I've already designed a system that would reproduce it on the screen.

Thanks,
- Sam

One way is to just iterate through the string and pull out each character with string.sub:

for i = 1, #str do
  local char = string.sub(str, i, i)
end

Okay, many thanks :)/>

- Sam

Okay, having a few problems.

I want the system to read from a table inside a table. So, I have two for statements that run through all of the x positions for a y value, then moves on to the next y value. And, then, I have your for statement from above to read each character in the set. Currently, the sets of characters are set up as five characters as different values in the y lines sections of the main table. However, when I try to draw a pixel or set the cursor position, it says that the number of the x and y lines it is on (from the first two for statements) aren't numbers. I worked out why this wasn't working, but I can't work out how to get the number of the value of the x and y values it is on. These would be used to draw the pixel and to set the cursor position.

If you understood any of that, could you help me please?

CODE:

function main()
os.loadAPI("test")
for kv, v in pairs(test.cols) do
  for ki, i in pairs(v) do
    if #i == 5 then
      for kt=1, #i do
        local char = string.sub(i,k,k)
        if ki==1 then
          local colour = colFind(char)
 print(ki.." > "..kv)
 --paintutils.drawPixel(tonumber(i),tonumber(v),colour)
        elseif ki==2 then
 local colour = colFind(char)
 --term.setTextColor(colour)
elseif ki==3 then
 --term.setCursorPos(tonumber(i),tonumber(v))
 --print(char)
        end
      end
    end
  end
end
end

Thanks,
- Sam

As I understand pairs, it returns the key and value of a table. Because of this I would never be a number (seeing you use it as a string other places in the program), and since we are not provided with the other table I can not say whether or not it is a number. If you wish to get the length of the string you would use #I, or if you wish to see which letter in the string you would use the variable kt.

Indeed, it's very difficult to comment without seeing all the code you're omitting. Where's this "test" API?