Find text between phrases

How can i find text between two phrases?
ex: <::hi::> (i want "hi"

for word in string.gmatch("<::hi::.hi...hi","%w") do
  print(word)
end

will print any words but not characters.

You could use a combination of the string.find() and string.sub() function to do this, finding the first occurence of "<::" and the first of "::>" and then with string.sub taking the parts in between. Information on these functions: http://lua-users.org/wiki/StringLibraryTutorial

I think he's asking for something more like this kind of thing:

local myText = "<::hi::>"
print(string.match(myText, "<::(.-)::>"))

http://www.lua.org/pil/20.2.html

thanks

i found pattern <::(/>.+)::> worked