line parsing in lua

[Max Ischenko <max@...>]

Hi.
I'm trying to implement line parsing in Lua.
Line syntax is similar to shell one, where double quotes protect words in
them to be splitted.

<word> [<word> <"word with spaces"> ...]

I want to parse the line into Lua table where fields are line words.
For example:

cmd first-arg "second arg" 3

should be converted into table t
t.1 = 'cmd' t.2 = 'first-arg', t.3='second arg', t.4='3'

I found two variants but both are sucks:
gsub(args, '"?([^"]+)"?', function (w) tinsert(%t, w) end)
gsub(args, '(%w+)', function (w) tinsert(%t, w) end)

Has anyone better one?


PS: Why Lua uses it's own pattern syntax instead of popular and standard
POSIX REs?

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