How to iterate individual characters in Lua string?

Question

I have a string in Lua and want to iterate individual characters in it. But no code I\'ve tried works and the official manual only shows how to find and replace substrings :

Answer 1

Iterating to construct a string and returning this string as a table with load()...

itab=function(char)
local result
for i=1,#char do
 if i==1 then
  result=string.format('%s','{')
 end
result=result..string.format('\'%s\'',char:sub(i,i))
 if i~=#char then
  result=result..string.format('%s',',')
 end
 if i==#char then
  result=result..string.format('%s','}')
 end
end
 return load('return '..result)()
end

dump=function(dump)
for key,value in pairs(dump) do
 io.write(string.format("%s=%s=%s\n",key,type(value),value))
end
end

res=itab('KOYAANISQATSI')

dump(res)

Puts out...

1=string=K
2=string=O
3=string=Y
4=string=A
5=string=A
6=string=N
7=string=I
8=string=S
9=string=Q
10=string=A
11=string=T
12=string=S
13=string=I