Re: Use-cases for string.gsub(str, "().", "%1")

["Soni L." <fakedme@...>]

On 20/08/15 11:07 AM, Matthew Wild wrote:
> On 19 August 2015 at 21:18, Soni L. <fakedme@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are there any use-cases for string.gsub(str, "().", "%1")?
> >
> > If not, can it please become an error? It's just... weird... unexpected...
> >
> > (I'm talking about the very weird number to string coercion which happens
> > there)
> I wanted to triumphantly say there was a use-case, in converting text
> to netstrings. However unfortunately the result is always off-by-one:
>
>    ("hello world!"):gsub("^(.*)()$", "%2:%1,") -- 13:hello world!,
>
> See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netstring
>
> However in any case I don't think the fact that position captures can
> be used directly as replacements is really an issue, it's pretty much
> exactly what I would expect to happen.
>
> Regards,
> Matthew
This is Lua.

("hello world!"):gsub("^(.-)()(.?)$", "%2:%1%3,") -- 13:hello world!,

(note: doesn't work for empty string)

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