split

split a string on a specified separator

local du = require "lib/dtutils"
local result = du.split(str, pat)

str - string - the string to split
pat - string - the pattern to split on

split separates a string into a table of strings. The strings are separated at each occurrence of the supplied pattern. The pattern may be any pattern as described in the lua docs. Each match of the pattern is consumed and not returned.

result - table - a table of strings on success, or an empty table on error

split("/a/long/path/name/to/a/file.txt", "/") 

would return a table like

{"a", "long", "path", "name", "to", "a", "file.txt"}

http://lua-users.org/wiki/SplitJoin