很多答案只接受单字符分隔符，或者不能很好地处理边缘情况(例如空分隔符)，所以我认为我将提供一个更明确的解决方案。

这里有两个函数，gsplit和split，改编自Scribunto MediaWiki扩展中的代码，用于维基百科等维基。该代码在GPL v2下获得许可。我已经更改了变量名，并添加了注释，使代码更容易理解，我还更改了代码，使用常规的Lua字符串模式，而不是Scribunto的Unicode字符串模式。原始代码在这里有测试用例。

-- gsplit: iterate over substrings in a string separated by a pattern
-- 
-- Parameters:
-- text (string)    - the string to iterate over
-- pattern (string) - the separator pattern
-- plain (boolean)  - if true (or truthy), pattern is interpreted as a plain
--                    string, not a Lua pattern
-- 
-- Returns: iterator
--
-- Usage:
-- for substr in gsplit(text, pattern, plain) do
--   doSomething(substr)
-- end
local function gsplit(text, pattern, plain)
  local splitStart, length = 1, #text
  return function ()
    if splitStart then
      local sepStart, sepEnd = string.find(text, pattern, splitStart, plain)
      local ret
      if not sepStart then
        ret = string.sub(text, splitStart)
        splitStart = nil
      elseif sepEnd < sepStart then
        -- Empty separator!
        ret = string.sub(text, splitStart, sepStart)
        if sepStart < length then
          splitStart = sepStart + 1
        else
          splitStart = nil
        end
      else
        ret = sepStart > splitStart and string.sub(text, splitStart, sepStart - 1) or ''
        splitStart = sepEnd + 1
      end
      return ret
    end
  end
end

-- split: split a string into substrings separated by a pattern.
-- 
-- Parameters:
-- text (string)    - the string to iterate over
-- pattern (string) - the separator pattern
-- plain (boolean)  - if true (or truthy), pattern is interpreted as a plain
--                    string, not a Lua pattern
-- 
-- Returns: table (a sequence table containing the substrings)
local function split(text, pattern, plain)
  local ret = {}
  for match in gsplit(text, pattern, plain) do
    table.insert(ret, match)
  end
  return ret
end

split函数的一些例子:

local function printSequence(t)
  print(unpack(t))
end

printSequence(split('foo, bar,baz', ',%s*'))       -- foo     bar     baz
printSequence(split('foo, bar,baz', ',%s*', true)) -- foo, bar,baz
printSequence(split('foo', ''))                    -- f       o       o

下面是一个在Lua 4.0中工作的例程，返回inputstr中由sep分隔的子字符串的表t:

function string_split(inputstr, sep)
    local inputstr = inputstr .. sep
    local idx, inc, t = 0, 1, {}
    local idx_prev, substr
    repeat 
        idx_prev = idx
        inputstr = strsub(inputstr, idx + 1, -1)    -- chop off the beginning of the string containing the match last found by strfind (or initially, nothing); keep the rest (or initially, all)
        idx = strfind(inputstr, sep)                -- find the 0-based r_index of the first occurrence of separator 
        if idx == nil then break end                -- quit if nothing's found
        substr = strsub(inputstr, 0, idx)           -- extract the substring occurring before the separator (i.e., data field before the next delimiter)
        substr = gsub(substr, "[%c" .. sep .. " ]", "") -- eliminate control characters, separator and spaces
        t[inc] = substr             -- store the substring (i.e., data field)
        inc = inc + 1               -- iterate to next
    until idx == nil
    return t
end

这个简单的测试

inputstr = "the brown lazy fox jumped over the fat grey hen ... or something."
sep = " " 
t = {}
t = string_split(inputstr,sep)
for i=1,15 do
    print(i, t[i])
end

收益率:

--> t[1]=the
--> t[2]=brown
--> t[3]=lazy
--> t[4]=fox
--> t[5]=jumped
--> t[6]=over
--> t[7]=the
--> t[8]=fat
--> t[9]=grey
--> t[10]=hen
--> t[11]=...
--> t[12]=or
--> t[13]=something.

你可以使用penlight图书馆。它有一个使用分隔符分割字符串的函数，输出列表。

它实现了许多我们在编程时可能需要和Lua中缺少的功能。

下面是使用它的示例。

> 
> stringx = require "pl.stringx"
> 
> str = "welcome to the world of lua"
> 
> arr = stringx.split(str, " ")
> 
> arr
{welcome,to,the,world,of,lua}
> 

如果你在Lua中拆分字符串，你应该尝试string.gmatch()或string.sub()方法。如果知道要分割字符串的索引，则使用string.sub()方法;如果要解析字符串以找到要分割字符串的位置，则使用string.gmatch()方法。

使用Lua 5.1参考手册中的string.gmatch()示例:

 t = {}
 s = "from=world, to=Lua"
 for k, v in string.gmatch(s, "(%w+)=(%w+)") do
   t[k] = v
 end

我喜欢这个简短的解决方案

function split(s, delimiter)
    result = {};
    for match in (s..delimiter):gmatch("(.-)"..delimiter) do
        table.insert(result, match);
    end
    return result;
end

根据用例，这可能是有用的。它将剪切标志两侧的所有文本:

b = "This is a string used for testing"

--Removes unwanted text
c = (b:match("a([^/]+)used"))

print (c)

输出:

string