Extract substrings by matching patterns in the input string. This function can be used to extract specific information from a string.

Syntax

string,​ ... utf8.match ( string input, string pattern, [ int index = 1 ] )

Required Arguments

• input: A string character sequence.
• pattern: A string match pattern.

Optional Arguments

NOTE: When using optional arguments, you might need to supply all arguments before the one you wish to use.

• index (default: 1): An integer representing the beginning position for the pattern matching.

Returns

• string: value 1
• ...: values

Returns a sequence of string matches from the input string, nil otherwise.

Code Examples

shared

This example shows how to extract values from an input string by using a pattern to match the value parts.

local input = "Level: 5, Rank: General, 128.42 points"
local level, rank, points = utf8.match(input, "Level: (%d+), Rank: (.-), (%d+.?%d*) points")
level, points = tonumber(level), tonumber(points)

print(level, rank, points) -- 5, General, 128.42

See Also

UTF8 Library Functions

• utf8.byte
• utf8.char
• utf8.charpos
• utf8.escape
• utf8.find
• utf8.fold
• utf8.gmatch
• utf8.gsub
• utf8.insert
• utf8.len
• utf8.lower
• utf8.match
• utf8.ncasecmp
• utf8.next
• utf8.remove
• utf8.reverse
• utf8.sub
• utf8.title
• utf8.upper
• utf8.width
• utf8.widthindex

Reference

• Scripting Functions