[Solved] Is there an easier way to do this? (getwords)

function getwords(str)
	 newstr = {}
	num = 0
	for word in string.gmatch(str, "%a+") do
		table.insert(newstr, word)
	end
	return newstr
end

I'm trying to make a function that separates a string into an array containing every word in the string. I'm pretty new with arrays, but I found this string.gmatch function online that looks promising. Is this function default and/or is there an easier way?


Solved. Apparently that code just isn't going to work and Lua already wrote something to do exactly what I'm trying to do.

you can do

table.insert(newstr,word)

instead of

newstr[num] = word
num = num + 1

and its actually a table not an array :D/>/>

You could try to use the split join method that was already written by our good friends at LUA :D/>/>

This method splits a string by a certain pattern into a table and then returns said table:

-- Compatibility: Lua-5.1
function split(str, pat)
   local t = {}  -- NOTE: use {n = 0} in Lua-5.0
   local fpat = "(.-)" .. pat
   local last_end = 1
   local s, e, cap = str:find(fpat, 1)
   while s do
	  if s ~= 1 or cap ~= "" then
  table.insert(t,cap)
	  end
	  last_end = e+1
	  s, e, cap = str:find(fpat, last_end)
   end
   if last_end <= #str then
	  cap = str:sub(last_end)
	  table.insert(t, cap)
   end
   return t
end

I DID NOT WRITE THIS!
^^ Code taken directly from http://lua-users.org/wiki/SplitJoin

How you would apply this for splitting a word is calling the split method with a pattern of space:

local sSentence = "This is a cool string!"
local tWords = {}

tWords = split( sSentence, " " ) -- Split the string by spaces.

-- Print out the table.
for index,value in ipairs( tWords ) do
  print( tWords[i] )
end

-- OUTPUT --
This
is
a
cool
string!
----------------

Hope I helped! :P/>/>

Any numbers included in str are converted to nil for some reason, and just ignored. I'll try the split thing.

Ex:
getwords("string one") returns {"string", "one"}
getwords("string 2") returns {"string"} (i think)

The split thing worked perfectly. Thanks!