Lua string functions

Lua string functions

These are the functions in the "string" table.

Indices, where used, start at 1 for the first character (not zero). Negative numbers count from the right, so -1 is the last character, -2 the second last, and so on.

All strings have a metatable added to them by Lua with an __index entry pointing to the string table. What this means is that you can write string function calls in two ways:


s = "hello, world"
string.len (s) --> 12
s:len ()       --> 12

The second version is shorter as the word "string" is implied. Note the colon after the s, not a dot.

Lua functions

string.byte - Converts a character into its ASCII (decimal) equivalent
string.char - Converts ASCII codes into their equivalent characters
string.dump - Converts a function into binary
string.find - Searches a string for a pattern
string.format - Formats a string
string.gfind - Iterate over a string (obsolete in Lua 5.1)
string.gmatch - Iterate over a string
string.gsub - Substitute strings inside another string
string.len - Return the length of a string
string.lower - Converts a string to lower-case
string.match - Searches a string for a pattern
string.rep - Returns repeated copies of a string
string.reverse - Reverses the order of characters in a string
string.sub - Returns a substring of a string
string.upper - Converts a string to upper-case

Topics

Lua LPEG library
Lua PCRE regular expression functions
Lua base functions
Lua bc (big number) functions
Lua bit manipulation functions
Lua coroutine functions
Lua debug functions
Lua io functions
Lua math functions
Lua os functions
Lua package functions
Lua script extensions
Lua syntax
Lua table functions
Lua utilities
Regular Expressions
Scripting callbacks - plugins
Scripting