Lua String replace

Question

How would i do this?

I got this:

name = "^aH^ai"
string.gsub(name, "^a", "")

which should return "Hi", but it grabs the caret character as a pattern character

What would be a work around for this? (must be done in gsub)

Because ^ is a special character, you need use % to escape it in Lua. — Huang F. Lei, Nov 30 '10 at 02:03

score 95 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 25 '14 at 07:40

95

Try:

name = "^aH^ai"
name = name:gsub("%^a", "")

edited Feb 25 '14 at 07:40

Dave Jarvis

answered Nov 28 '10 at 16:33

Kknd

The tutorial uses a slightly different syntax. Why is `gsub` written with a `:` instead of a `.` in this answer? – Anderson Green Jun 21 '17 at 20:31
20

@AndersonGreen: it can be called as a library function of the `string` library or as a method on a `string` object. The `:` is syntax sugar in Lua which effectively implies the object on which the method is called being passed as first parameter. – 0xC0000022L Aug 31 '17 at 12:04
What if we want to replace special characters with special character? like email = email:gsub("%+", "%2b"). Effectively we want to to URL Encode the + to %2b – Diceyus Mar 17 '22 at 21:21

1 Answers1