Re: [string.gmatch] Getting rid of parentheses?

[Rob Kendrick <rjek@...>]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 10:53:45AM +0200, Gilles Ganault wrote:
> Hello
> 
> Google didn't help to figure out why Lua returns found tokens between
> parentheses:
> 
> =========
> page = '<span>item1</span><br>(item2)<br>(item3)<br><i>'
> 
> for a,b in string.gmatch(page,
> '<span>.-</span><br>(.-)<br>(.-)<br><i>') do
> 	stuff = a .. b .. "\n"
> 	print(stuff)
> end	
> =========
> 
> Here's what the console says:
> =========
> (item2)(item3)
> =========
> 
> What's the right way to extract tokens from a string without having
> them displayed with parentheses?

Don't include the parentheses in the capture.  The trouble you have here
is that you're matching everything between the <br> tags and capturing
it, because parentheses describe what to capture.  You can escape with
%:

> page = '<span>item1</span><br>(item2)<br>(item3)<br><i>'
> =page:match "<span>.-</span><br>(.-)<br>(.-)<br><i>"
(item2)	(item3)
> =page:match "<span>.-</span><br>%((.-)%)<br>%((.-)%)<br><i>"
item2	item3
> 

B.