I'm currently teaching myself Lua for iOS game development, since I've heard lots of very good things about it. I'm really impressed by the level of documentation there is for the language, which makes learning it that much easier.
My problem is that I've found a Lua concept that nobody seems to have a "beginner's" explanation for: nested brackets for quotes. For example, I was taught that long strings with escaped single and double quotes like the following:
string_1 = "This is an \"escaped\" word and \"here\'s\" another."
could also be written without the overall surrounding quotes. Instead one would simply replace them with double brackets, like the following:
string_2 = [[This is an "escaped" word and "here's" another.]]
Those both make complete sense to me. But I can also write the string_2 line with "nested brackets," which include equal signs between both sets of the double brackets, as follows:
string_3 = [===[This is an "escaped" word and "here's" another.]===]
My question is simple. What is the point of the syntax used in string_3? It gives the same result as string_1 and string_2 when given as an an input for print(), so I don't understand why nested brackets even exist. Can somebody please help a noob (me) gain some perspective?
It would be used if your string contains a substring that is equal to the delimiter. For example, the following would be invalid:
string_2 = [[This is an "escaped" word, the characters ]].]]
Therefore, in order for it to work as expected, you would need to use a different string delimiter, like in the following:
string_3 = [===[This is an "escaped" word, the characters ]].]===]
I think it's safe to say that not a lot of string literals contain the substring ]], in which case there may never be a reason to use the above syntax.
It helps to, well, nest them:
print [==[malucart[[bbbb]]]bbbb]==]
Will print:
malucart[[bbbb]]]bbbb
But if that's not useful enough, you can use them to put whole programs in a string:
loadstring([===[print "o m g"]===])()
Will print:
o m g
I personally use them for my static/dynamic library implementation. In the case you don't know if the program has a closing bracket with the same amount of =s, you should determine it with something like this:
local c = 0
while contains(prog, "]" .. string.rep("=", c) .. "]") do
c = c + 1
end
-- do stuff
Related
I'm working on a simple localization function for my scripts and, although it's starting to work quite well so far, I don't know how to avoid scape/special characters to be shown in UI as part of the text after feeding the widgets with the strings returned by f:read().
For example, if in a certain Strings.ES.txt's line I have: Ignorar \"Etiquetas de capa\", I'd expect backslashes didn't end showing up just like when I feed the widget with a normal string between doble quotes like: "Ignorar \"Etiquetas de capa\"", or at least have a way to avoid it. I've been trial-and-erroring with tostring() and load() functions and different (surely nonsense 🙄) concatenations like: load(tostring("[[" .. f:read()" .. ]]")) and such without any success, so here I'm again...
Do someone know if there is a way to get scape characters in a string returned by f:read() still behave as special as when they are found in a regular one?
I don't know how to avoid [e]scape/special characters to be shown in UI as part of the text
What you want is to "unescape" or "unquote" a string to interpret escape sequences as if it were parsed as a quoted string by Lua.
[...] with the strings returned by f:read() [...]
The fact that this string was obtained using f:read() can be ignored; all that matters is that it is a string literal without quotes using quoted string escapes.
I've been trial-and-erroring with tostring() and load() functions and different [...] concatenations like: load(tostring("[[" .. f:read()" .. ]]")) and such without any success [...]
This is almost how to do it, except you chose the wrong string literal type: "Long" strings using pairs square brackets ([ and ]) do not interpret escape sequences at all; they are intended for including long, raw, possibly multiline strings in Lua programs and often come in handy when you need to represent literal strings with backslashes (e.g. regular expressions - not to be confused with Lua patterns, which use % for escapes, and lack the basic alternation operator of regular expressions).
If you instead use single or double quotes to wrap the string, it will work fine:
local function unescape_string(escaped)
return assert(load(('return "%s"'):format(escaped)))()
end
this will produce a tiny Lua program (a "chunk") for each string, which just consists of return "<contents>". Recall that Lua chunks are just functions. Thus you can simply call the function to obtain the value of the string it returns. That way, Lua will interpret the escape sequences for us. The same approach is often used to use Lua for reading data serialized as Lua code.
Note also the use of assert for error handling: load returns nil, err if there is a syntax error. To deal with this gracefully, we can wrap the call to load in assert: assert returns its first argument (the chunk returned by load) if it is truthy; otherwise, if it is falsy (e.g. nil in this case), assert errors, using its second argument as an error message. If you omit the assert and your input causes a syntax error, you will instead get a cryptic "attempt to call a nil value" error.
You probably want to do additional validation, especially if these escaped strings are user-provided - otherwise a malicious string like str"; os.execute("...") can trivially invoke a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability, allowing it to both execute Lua e.g. to block (while 1 do end), slow down or hijack your application, as well as shell commands using os.execute. To guard against this, searching for an unescaped closing quote should be sufficient (syntax errors e.g. through invalid escapes will still be possible, but RCE should not be possible excepting Lua interpreter bugs):
local function unescape_string(escaped)
-- match start & end of sequences of zero or more backslashes followed by a double quote
for from, to in escaped:gmatch'()\\*()"' do
-- number of preceding backslashes must be odd for the double quote to be escaped
assert((to - from) % 2 ~= 0, "unescaped double quote")
end
return assert(load(('return "%s"'):format(escaped)))()
end
Alternatively, a more robust (but also more complex) and presumably more efficient way of unescaping this would be to manually implement escape sequences through string.gsub; that way you get full control, which is more suitable for user-provided input:
-- Single-character backslash escapes of Lua 5.1 according to the reference manual: https://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#2.1
local escapes = {a = '\a', b = '\b', f = '\b', n = '\n', r = '\r', t = '\t', v = '\v', ['\\'] = '\\', ["'"] = "'", ['"'] = '"'}
local function unescape_string(escaped)
return escaped:gsub("\\(.)", escapes)
end
you may implement escapes here as you see fit; for example, this misses decimal escapes, which could easily be implemented as escaped:gsub("\\(%d%d?%d?)", string.char) (this uses coercion of strings to numbers in string.char and a replacement function as second argument to string.gsub).
This function can finally be used straightforwardly as unescape_string(f:read()).
It's a weird problem
to_be_stripped="D:\\Users\\UserKnown\\PycharmProjects\\ProjectKnown\\PT\\collections\\120"
And two strings below:
s1="D:\\Users\\UserKnown\\PycharmProjects\\ProjectKnown\\PT\\collections\\120\\[Content_Types].xml"
s2="D:\\Users\\UserKnown\\PycharmProjects\\ProjectKnown\\PT\\collections\\120\\_rels\.rels"
When I use the command below:
s1.strip(to_be_stripped)
s2.strip(to_be_stripped)
I get these outputs:
'[Content_Types].x'
'_rels\\.'
If I use lstrip(), they will be:
'[Content_Types].xml'
'_rels\\.rels'
Which is the right outputs.
However, if we replace all Project Known with zeus_pipeline:
to_be_stripped="D:\\Users\\UserKnown\\PycharmProjects\\zeus_pipeline\\PT\\collections\\120"
And:
s2="D:\\Users\\UserKnown\\PycharmProjects\\zeus_pipeline\\PT\\collections\\120\\_rels\.rels"
s2.lstrip(to_be_stripped)will be '.rels'
If I use / instead of \\, nothing goes wrong. I am wondering why this problem happens.
strip isn't meant to remove full strings exactly. Rather, you give it a string, and every character in that string is removed from the start and of the string to be stripped.
In your case, the variable to_be_stripped contains the characters m and l, so those are stripped from the end of s1. However, it doesn't contain the character x, so the stripping stops there and no characters beyond that are removed.
Check out this question. The accepted answer is probably more extensive than you need - I like another user's suggestion of using replace instead of strip. This would look like:
s1.replace(to_be_stripped, "")
In TI-BASIC, the + operation is overloaded for string concatenation (in this, if nothing else, TI-BASIC joins the rest of the world).
However, any attempt to concatenate involving an empty string raises a Dimension Mismatch error:
"Fizz"+"Buzz"
FizzBuzz
"Fizz"+""
Error
""+"Buzz"
Error
""+""
Error
Why does this occur, and is there an elegant workaround? I've been using a starting space and truncating the string when necessary (doesn't always work well) or using a loop to add characters one at a time (slow).
The best way depends on what you are doing.
If you have a string (in this case, Str1) that you need to concatenate with another (Str2), and you don't know if it is empty, then this is a good general-case solution:
Str2
If length(Str1
Str1+Str2
If you need to loop and add a stuff to the string each time, then this is your best solution:
Before the loop:
" →Str1
In the loop:
Str1+<stuff_that_isn't_an_empty_string>→Str1
After the loop:
sub(Str1,2,length(Str1)-1→Str1
There are other situations, too, and if you have a specific situation, then you should post a simplified version of the relevant code.
Hope this helps!
It is very unfortunate that TI-Basic doesn't support empty strings. If you are starting with an empty string and adding chars, you have to do something like this:
"?
For(I,1,3
Prompt Str1
Ans+Str1
End
sub(Ans,2,length(Ans)-1
Another useful trick is that if you have a string that you are eventually going to evaluate using expr(, you can do "("+Str1+")"→Str1 and then freely do search and replace on the string. This is a necessary workaround since you can't search and replace any text involving the first or last character in a string.
What would be the highest-performing implementation to determine if a string that represents an SQL alias needs to be wrapped in double-quotes?
Presently, in pg-promise I am wrapping every alias in double-quotes, to play it safe. I am looking to make the output SQL neater and shorter, if possible.
And I am divided which approach is the best -
to use a regular expression, somehow
to do a direct algorithm with strings
not to change it at all, if there are reasons for that
Basically, I am looking to improve function as.alias, if possible, not to wrap aliases into double quotes when it is not needed.
What have I tried so far...
I thought at first to do it only for the 99% of all cases - not to add double-quotes when your alias is the most typical one, just a simple word:
function skipQuotes(alias) {
const m = alias.match(/[A-Z]+|[a-z]+/);
return m && m[0] === alias;
}
This only checks it is a single word that uses either upper or lower case, but not the combination.
SOLUTION
Following the answer, I ended up with implementation that should cover 99% of all practical use cases, which is what I was trying to achieve:
const m = alias.match(/[a-z_][a-z0-9_$]*|[A-Z_][A-Z0-9_$]*/);
if (m && m[0] === alias) {
// double quotes will be skipped
} else {
// double quotes will be added
}
i.e. the surrounding double quotes are not added when the alias uses a simple syntax:
it is a same-case single word, without spaces
it can contain underscores, and can start with one
it can contain digits and $, but cannot start with those
Removing double quotes is admirable -- it definitely makes queries easier to read. The rules are pretty simple. A "valid" identifier consists of:
Letters (including diacritical marks), numbers, underscore, and dollar sign.
Starts with a letter (including diacriticals) or underscore.
Is not a reserved word.
(I think I have this summarized correctly. The real rules are in the documentation.)
The first two are readily implemented using regular expressions. The last probably wants a reference table for lookup (and the list varies by Postgres release -- although less than you might imagine).
Otherwise, the identifier needs to be surrounded by escape characters. Postgres uses double quotes (which is ANSI standard).
One reason you may want to do this is because Postgres converts identifiers to lower case for comparison. So, the following works fine:
select xa, Xa, xA, "xa"
from (select 1 as Xa) y
However, this does not work:
select Xa
from (select 1 as "Xa") y
Nor does:
select "Xa"
from (select 1 as Xa) y
In fact, there is no way to get refer to "Xa" without using quotes (at least none that I can readily think of).
Enforcing the discipline of exact matches can be a good thing or a bad thing. I find that one discipline too many: I admit to often ignoring case when writing "casual" code; it is just simpler to type without capitalization (or using double quotes). For more formal code, I try to be consistent.
On the other hand, the rules do allow:
select "Xa", "aX", ax
from (select 1 as "Xa", 2 as "aX", 3 as AX) y
(This returns 1, 2, 3.)
This is a naming convention that I would be happy if it were not allowed.
In most programming languages, 'c' is a character and "c" is a string of length 1. But Coq (according to its standard ascii and string library) uses "c" as the notation for both, which requires constant use of Open Scope to clarify which one is being referred to. How can you avoid this and designate characters in the usual way, with single quotes? It would be nice if there is a solution that only partially overrides the standard library, changing the notation but recycling the rest.
Require Import Ascii.
Require Import String.
Check "a"%char.
Check "b"%string.
or this
Program Definition c (s:string) : ascii :=
match s with "" => " "%char | String a _ => a end.
Check (c"A").
Check ("A").
I am quite confident that there is no smart way of doing this, but there is a somewhat annoying one: simply declare one notation for each character.
Notation "''c''" := "c" : char_scope.
Notation "''a''" := "a" : char_scope.
Check 'a'.
Check 'c'.
It shouldn't be too hard to write a script for automatically generating those declarations. I don't know if this has any negative side-effects on Coq's parser, though.