Making Lua Like Php

wiki

Umm... [why would you want that]? --f

Note: Some of these PHP-style functions don't do exactly the same as PHP. In some cases this is intentional.

print_r

See PHP-like print_r function in TableSerialization.

explode

Example: explode(" and ","one and two and three and four") --> {"one","two","three","four"}

Compatibility: Lua 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 and (probably) 5.3

function explode(div,str) -- credit: http://richard.warburton.it
  if (div=='') then return false end
  local pos,arr = 0,{}
  -- for each divider found
  for st,sp in function() return string.find(str,div,pos,true) end do
    table.insert(arr,string.sub(str,pos,st-1)) -- Attach chars left of current divider
    pos = sp + 1 -- Jump past current divider
  end
  table.insert(arr,string.sub(str,pos)) -- Attach chars right of last divider
  return arr
end

implode

Use table.concat:

PHP implode(join,array) is equivalent to Lua table.concat(table,join)

PHP: implode(" ",array("this","is","a","test","array")) --> "this is a test array"

Lua: table.concat({"this","is","a","test","array"}," ") --> "this is a test array"

PHP Tables

function phpTable(...) -- abuse to: http://richard.warburton.it
  local newTable,keys,values={},{},{}
  newTable.pairs=function(self) -- pairs iterator
    local count=0
    return function() 
      count=count+1
      return keys[count],values[keys[count]]
    end
  end
  setmetatable(newTable,{
    __newindex=function(self,key,value)
      if not self[key] then table.insert(keys,key)
      elseif value==nil then -- Handle item delete
        local count=1
        while keys[count]~=key do count = count + 1 end
        table.remove(keys,count)
      end
      values[key]=value -- replace/create
    end,
    __index=function(self,key) return values[key] end
  })
  for x=1,table.getn(arg) do
    for k,v in pairs(arg[x]) do newTable[k]=v end
  end
  return newTable
end

Example Usage:

-- arguments optional
test = phpTable({blue="blue"},{red="r"},{green="g"})

test['life']='bling'
test['alpha']='blong'
test['zeta']='blast'
test['gamma']='blue'
test['yak']='orange'
test['zeta']=nil -- delete zeta

for k,v in test:pairs() do
	print(k,v)
end

The output:

blue    blue
red     r
green   g
life    bling
alpha   blong
gamma   blue
yak     orange

preg_replace

Example: preg_replace("\\((.*?)\\)","", " Obvious exits: n(closed) w(open) rift")

The following preg_replace variants support using the wildcards %n in the replace.

1. Using Lua-style regular expressions:

• Dependencies: none
• Compatibility: Lua 5.0 and 5.1

function preg_replace(pat,with,p)
  return (string.gsub(p,pat,with))
end

2. Using PCRE or POSIX regular expressions:

• Dependencies: Lrexlib 2.0 [1], PCRE or POSIX regex libraries
• Compatibility: Lua 5.1

function preg_replace(pat,with,p)
  return (rex.gsub(p,pat,with))
end

Nutria

serialize()

[lua-phpserialize] module implements serialization of Lua tables to PHP serialize() format.

See Also

• MakingLuaLikeRuby