Re: string.gsub (Lua 5.1.1)

[Shmuel Zeigerman <shmuz@...>]

Nick Gammon wrote:
> Probably the manual should be reworded as:
>
> "gsub also returns, as its second value, the total number of matches made."

But this would be, in fact, an API alteration, and API is not allowed to 
change after the Lua version is officially out.

> Alternatively, change the behaviour of Lua to actually not count the 
> cases where the replacement isn't made. However in that case, do you 
> count this example:
>
> string.gsub ("a", "a", "a")
>
> You could argue that replacing "a" by "a" is not really replacing it. 

I think gsub itself should be agnostic in regard to whether the 
replacing string is equal to the match. It is up to the application to 
be (or not to be) interested in that.

Let's see another example:

  print (string.gsub ("abc123", "(.)",
    function(c)
      local n = tonumber(c)
      return n and n+1
    end))

> abc234	6

It seems returning "abc234", 3 would make more sense.

--
Shmuel