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

function split(str,sep)
    local array = {}
    local reg = string.format("([^%s]+)",sep)
    for mem in string.gmatch(str,reg) do
        table.insert(array, mem)
    end
    return array
end
local s = "one;two;;four"
local array = split(s,";")

for n, w in ipairs(array) do
    print(n .. ": " .. w)
end

result:

1:one

2:two

3:four