How to split string by capital letters?

I have a string for example CatCook and i am trying to split it by the capital letters. I tried doing this:

local str = ("CatCook"):split("%u")
print(str)

Which %u should split it by the capitals? Or am i completely wrong? It still returns CatCook while i would like it to return Cat Cook. How would i do it?

Thanks, kirda

So apparently i found about using brackets in patterns and created 2 lines method

local str = "ThisWillSplitThisStringBySpacesIThink"

str = string.gsub(str, "(%u)", " %1")
-- using brackets it allows third argument to access it by doing %1 (1 since it's the first bracket) and you can add TO or AFTER the letter instead of chaning it

str = string.sub(str, 2, -1) -- Removes first space (idk how to remove it otherwise)

print(str)

I randomly found similar thing in comma_value converter at the bottom of this

AnonymousOct 23, 2020Edited Nov 9, 2020

✓ Accepted answer

Sorry for the late response. Let's break this down to make it simpler. When using the %u identifier, you're finding the first instance in which a capital letter occurs. This is helpful, but not in your case. Why? Because the interpreter is going to see the capital C in Cat and stop searching.

So let's be clear. You aren't searching for every capital letter. You're searching for every instance in which a capital letter is preceded by a lowercase letter.

I must admit, I really know very little about string manipulation and regex in general. I'm sure there's a much more efficient and concise way of doing this, likely with string.gsub() and string.gmatch(). Your question is a day old, though, and still has no answers, so I felt that you'd appreciate the help. My drawn out example...

local str = "CatCook"
local SplitLocation = string.find(str,"%l%u") --returns location of instance described. (3,4) in this example

local FirstString = string.sub(str,0,SplitLocation) --get section from beginning of string to SplitLocation
local SecondString = string.sub(str,SplitLocation + 1) --get section from SplitLocation to end of string
local FinalString = FirstString .. " " .. SecondString
print(FinalString) --prints "Cat Cook"

I hope this helps, and I highly recommend reading here for an in-depth discussion on string patterns/manipulation.

AnonymousOct 25, 2020Edited Oct 25, 2020Permalink

5 comments

Thank you soo much!!! i combined my knowledge with this and now it also works for strings with multiple capital letters

AnonymousOct 25, 2020#

Care to share what you did for that? That was pretty much the next step, and I didn't want to try to give you that information when I was unsure of it, myself.

AnonymousOct 26, 2020#

I have combined the %l%u with basic for loop which fixes %l%u not working for words with 1 letter which made me awesome result, i edited post and there is the script if you would like to see it

AnonymousOct 26, 2020#

Really good job, congrats.

AnonymousOct 26, 2020#

Look at my edited post at the bottom haha, we were trying and it was that easy ^^

AnonymousNov 9, 2020#

How to split string by capital letters?

1 answer

5 comments