LSL Wiki Mirror : llParseString2List

list llParseString2List(string src, list separators, list spacers)

Breaks src into a list, splitting at and discarding separators, and splitting at and keeping spacers (separators and spacers must be lists of strings, maximum of 8 each). All instances of each separator will be used to parse the string. Empty strings are not returned by this function - if you need those, look at llParseStringKeepNulls.

Calling:

llParseString2List("one,two,three,'four','five,six' ",[","],[]);

Will produce the list:

["one", "two", "three", "'four'", "'five", "six' "]

Calling:

llParseString2List("one,two,three,'four','five,six' ",[",","'"],[]);

Will produce the list:

["one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", " "]

Calling:

llParseString2List("A:B::D", [":"], []);

Will get the list:

["A", "B", "D"]

Calling:

llParseString2List("AllCowsEatGrass", ["A", "C", "E", "G"], []);

Will get the list:

["ll", "ows", "at", "rass"]

Calling:

llParseString2List("AllCowsEatGrass", [], ["A", "C", "E", "G"]);

Will get the list:

["A", "ll", "C", "ows", "E", "at", "G", "rass"]

So, when ["A", "C", "E", "G"] was in separators, it removed them, then split the string at that point. When ["A", "C", "E", "G"] was in spacers, it splits the string before and after each spacer, leaving the spacer intact.

To split a sentence into words by using " " as the separator:

llParseString2List("All Cows Eat Grass", [" "], []);

Returns this list:

["All", "Cows", "Eat", "Grass"]

Useful function to retrieve a first name from an avatar's entire name (excluding group).

string getFirstName(string fullName) 
{
     return llList2String(llParseString2List(fullName,[" "],[]),0);
}

Be very careful about using this function on strings that may have been input from untrusted sources (for example, strings heard in open chat via a listen() event). A list with a large number of items can consume a large amount of a script's memory, potentially causing it to halt with a stack/heap collision error; disruptive users may try to crash your script by deliberately speaking strings that will parse to extremely large lists.

llParseStringKeepNulls: keeps null strings between separators or spacers
llDumpList2String: performs the opposite function.

See also llCSV2List and ExampleListConversion.

Functions | Lists | Strings