Re: Most efficient way to recognize a line by its first (up to) three characters

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

> Suppose I have one character code like this
> 
> A;0000;0000;0000             ("0"s is data)

Now that you've given us a sample of the input, the solution is easier:

	... read line
	local prefix,info=line:match("(.-);(.*)$")
	local h=handlers[p[prefix] or badprefix
	h(prefix,info)

and register handlers for "A", "AB", "ABC", etc.