Split a string using string.gmatch() in Lua

Question

There are some discussions here, and utility functions, for splitting strings, but I need an ad-hoc one-liner for a very simple task.

I have the following string:

Answer 1

Just changing * to + works.

local s = "one;two;;four"
local words = {}
for w in s:gmatch("([^;]+)") do 
    table.insert(words, w) 
    print(w)
end

The magic character * represents 0 or more occurrene, so when it meet ',', lua regarded it as a empty string that [^;] does not exist.