I think you'll find nested tables easier to maintain. You'll have one
extra table for each substitution, but I think that's a fair price for
some added clarity:
replacements = {
{ "caterpillar", "butterfly" },
{ "cat", "dog" },
{ "goldfish", "parrot" }};
function translate(text)
for i,v in ipairs(replacements) do
text = text:gsub(v[1], v[2]);
end
return text;
end
print(translate("The cat looked at the caterpillar as if it had just
swallowed a goldfish."));
should print out:
The dog looked at the butterfly as if it had just swallowed a
parrot.
Swap the first two lines of the substitutions table to get:
The dog looked at the dogerpillar as if it had just swallowed a
parrot.
