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stringlualua-patterns

Is there a Lua string.find without pattern

I apply a function, but looks so bad.

function find_without_pattern(s1,s2)
    for i =1,#s1-#s2+1 do
        local t = string.sub(s1,i,#s2+i-1)
        if t == s2 then
            return i,i+#s2-1
        end
    end
end
Solution

  • The string.find method provides an optional 4th parameter to enforce a plaintext search by itself.

    For example:

    string.find("he#.*o", "e#.*o", 1, true)

    will give you the correct results.

    Quoting the Lua manual pages:

    string.find (s, pattern [, init [, plain]])

    A value of true as a fourth, optional argument plain turns off the pattern matching facilities, so the function does a plain "find substring" operation, with no characters in pattern being considered magic. Note that if plain is given, then init must be given as well.