Disable magic characters in pattern

[Vraxi]

Hiya people
Im kinda new to LUA so might be a silly question....
But i got problems with the magic characters in patterns.
Is there some way i can disable these magic characters?

So the line: string.find("DoH!?!","DoH...") would return false?

I only want the string.find(arg1, arg2) to return true if arg1 contain arg2 exactly (no use of magic characters)

Both "DoH!?!" and "DoH..." have been entered by a user so demanding the user to type "DoH!%?!" and "DoH%.%.%." is not a solution



Vraxi

[DarkT]

string.find(arg1, arg2, 1, true)

The 3rd argument specifies where to start the search (1 is default), and the 4th specifies whether or not pattern matching facilities should be turned off (false is default), so setting it to true will just do a regular plain "find substring" operation.

[Shirik]

Originally Posted by DarkT string.find(arg1, arg2, 1, true) The 3rd argument specifies where to start the search (1 is default), and the 4th specifies whether or not pattern matching facilities should be turned off (false is default), so setting it to true will just do a regular plain "find substring" operation.

What would happen if you wanted to do pattern matching but needed to use that character?

Vraxi: You need to escape the . characters. You can do this with a % sign. What you would want, for your above expression:

string.find("DoH!?!","DoH%.%.%.")

And as you see:

> a = "DoH!?!";
> return string.find(a, "DoH...");
1       6
> return string.find(a, "DoH%.%.%.");
nil
> a = "DoH...";
> return string.find(a, "DoH%.%.%.");
1       6

(Btw, string.find returns nil, not false, when it doesn't match. Slight but important difference)


Good luck
-- Shirik

[Vraxi]

Many many thanks!!
It works perfectly now

(Btw, string.find returns nil, not false, when it doesn't match. Slight but important difference)

True true your right... i just forgot >.<

Vraxi