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Version: 5.4

patterns

Patterns in Lua are described by regular strings, which are interpreted as patterns by the pattern-matching functions string.find, string.gmatch, string.gsub, and string.match. This section describes the syntax and the meaning (that is, what they match) of these strings.

Character Class​

A character class is used to represent a set of characters. The following combinations are allowed in describing a character class:

  • x: (where x is not one of the magic characters ^$()%.[]*+-?) represents the character x itself.

  • .: (a dot) represents all characters.

  • %a: represents all letters.

  • %c: represents all control characters.

  • %d: represents all digits.

  • %g: represents all printable characters except space.

  • %l: represents all lowercase letters.

  • %p: represents all punctuation characters.

  • %s: represents all space characters.

  • %u: represents all uppercase letters.

  • %w: represents all alphanumeric characters.

  • %x: represents all hexadecimal digits.

  • %x: (where x is any non-alphanumeric character) represents the character x. This is the standard way to escape the magic characters. Any non-alphanumeric character (including all punctuation characters, even the non-magical) can be preceded by a '%' to represent itself in a pattern.

  • [set]: represents the class which is the union of all characters in set. A range of characters can be specified by separating the end characters of the range, in ascending order, with a '-'. All classes %x described above can also be used as components in set. All other characters in set represent themselves. For example, [%w_] (or [_%w]) represents all alphanumeric characters plus the underscore, [0-7] represents the octal digits, and [0-7%l%-] represents the octal digits plus the lowercase letters plus the '-' character.

You can put a closing square bracket in a set by positioning it as the first character in the set. You can put a hyphen in a set by positioning it as the first or the last character in the set. (You can also use an escape for both cases.)

The interaction between ranges and classes is not defined. Therefore, patterns like [%a-z] or [a-%%] have no meaning.

  • [^set]: represents the complement of set, where set is interpreted as above.

For all classes represented by single letters (%a, %c, etc.), the corresponding uppercase letter represents the complement of the class. For instance, %S represents all non-space characters.

The definitions of letter, space, and other character groups depend on the current locale. In particular, the class [a-z] may not be equivalent to %l.

Pattern Item​

A pattern item can be

  • a single character class, which matches any single character in the class;

  • a single character class followed by '*', which matches sequences of zero or more characters in the class. These repetition items will always match the longest possible sequence;

  • a single character class followed by '+', which matches sequences of one or more characters in the class. These repetition items will always match the longest possible sequence;

  • a single character class followed by '-', which also matches sequences of zero or more characters in the class. Unlike '*', these repetition items will always match the shortest possible sequence;

  • a single character class followed by '?', which matches zero or one occurrence of a character in the class. It always matches one occurrence if possible;

  • %n, for n between 1 and 9; such item matches a substring equal to the n-th captured string (see below);

  • %bxy, where x and y are two distinct characters; such item matches strings that start with x, end with y, and where the x and y are balanced. This means that, if one reads the string from left to right, counting +1 for an x and -1 for a y, the ending y is the first y where the count reaches 0. For instance, the item %b() matches expressions with balanced parentheses.

  • %f[set], a frontier pattern; such item matches an empty string at any position such that the next character belongs to set and the previous character does not belong to set. The set set is interpreted as previously described. The beginning and the end of the subject are handled as if they were the character '\0'.

Pattern​

A pattern is a sequence of pattern items. A caret '^' at the beginning of a pattern anchors the match at the beginning of the subject string. A '$' at the end of a pattern anchors the match at the end of the subject string. At other positions, '^' and '$' have no special meaning and represent themselves.

Captures​

A pattern can contain sub-patterns enclosed in parentheses; they describe captures. When a match succeeds, the substrings of the subject string that match captures are stored (captured) for future use. Captures are numbered according to their left parentheses. For instance, in the pattern "(a*(.)%w(%s*))", the part of the string matching "a*(.)%w(%s*)" is stored as the first capture, and therefore has number 1; the character matching "." is captured with number 2, and the part matching "%s*" has number 3.

As a special case, the capture () captures the current string position (a number). For instance, if we apply the pattern "()aa()" on the string "flaaap", there will be two captures: 3 and 5.

Multiple matches​

The function string.gsub and the iterator string.gmatch match multiple occurrences of the given pattern in the subject. For these functions, a new match is considered valid only if it ends at least one byte after the end of the previous match. In other words, the pattern machine never accepts the empty string as a match immediately after another match. As an example, consider the results of the following code:

> string.gsub("abc", "()a*()", print);
--> 1   2
--> 3   3
--> 4   4

The second and third results come from Lua matching an empty string after 'b' and another one after 'c'. Lua does not match an empty string after 'a', because it would end at the same position of the previous match.