Re: Convert a string to table without changing the order of the items

[Duncan Cross <duncan.cross@...>]

On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 1:06 PM, Hendrik Meiring <hmeiring@emss.co.za> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have string data with the format as shown below:
>
> {{
> ["vvector"]="(0, 1, 0)",
> ["uvector"]="(1, 0, 0)",
> ["origin"]="(0, 0, 0)",
> },
> }
>
> I need to convert this to a table but the order of the data must stay the
> same.
>
> Using the following code:
>
> local gentables = loadstring("return "..s)
> local tables = assert(gentables)()
>
> generates a table as shown below:

I would try transforming the key-value pairs into array entries,
something like this:

local s2 = s:gsub('%[(".-")%]%s*=%s*(".-")', '{k=%1, v=%2}')

This converts:
   ["key"]="value"
...into:
   {k="key", v="value"}

So the resulting table will be like this:

[1][+]
   [1][+]
      [k] origin
      [v] (0, 0, 0)
   [2][+]
      [k] uvector
      [v] (1, 0, 0)
   [3][+]
      [k] vvector
      [v] (0, 1, 0)

-Duncan