Lua: How to get string captures containing a specific substring?

Question

In Lua, in want to get captures from a string containing a specific substring. E.g. in the string

 test = "<item>foo</item>  <item>bar</item>"

I want to get items containing "a", which in this case would be "bar". I tried this:

print(string.find(test, "<item>(.-a.-)</item>"))

but the result is:

1   34  foo</item>  <item>bar

So .- is more greedy than I expected. What would be the correct pattern?

This wasn't meant for parsing, I'm looking for specific parts in the XML. — user2727133
– user2727133, Commented Sep 1, 2013 at 8:16

lhf · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-29 00:01:50Z

1

Try print(string.find(test, "<item>([^<]-a.-)</item>")).

answered Aug 29, 2013 at 0:01

lhf

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