string.Split and string.SafePattern

[vugi99]

It's annoying to copy the same code over and over to split strings. (Plus some of my versions in my packages had bugs or limitations)

-- Makes a safe string to append in a pattern without triggering special lua pattern rules
function string.SafePattern(str)

--[[
Splits strings, using a simple delimiter or a pattern delimiter
]]--
function string.Split(str, delimiter, is_pattern)

[vugi99]

@gtnardy what do you think ?

[gtnardy]

what are the use cases for the is_pattern ans SafePattern method?

[vugi99]

is_pattern allow you to split strings using a lua pattern : Split newlines : "([^\r\n]+)"
SafePattern : could be used for a user search query, escape the special pattern characters to find what the user wants without lua patterns intervention. Eg : user wants to search for [DEBUG] logs in a string, this won't work if this is entered as the [ character is a lua pattern character, it has to be escaped first with %.

[gtnardy]

I see, I found it confusing for someone that doesn't know what it does, and the difference for the methods

[Cheatoid]

Worth benchmarking on Lua 5.4.8:
return (string.gsub(str, "([%(%)%[%]%.%%%+%-%*%?%^%$])", "%%%1"))

There is a trade off:

• This excludes NUL char \0, which Lua patterns cannot conveniently match inside a character class. But, it could be handled with an additional string.gsub call.