[string.gmatch] Getting rid of parentheses?

[Gilles Ganault <gilles.ganault@...>]

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?

Thank you.