Split A Sting In Lua

local example = "an example string"
for i in string.gmatch(example, "%S+") do
   print(i)
end

via: http://lua-users.org/wiki/SplitJoin

Another approach

function mysplit (inputstr, sep)
        if sep == nil then
                sep = "%s"
        end
        local t={}
        for str in string.gmatch(inputstr, "([^"..sep.."]+)") do
                table.insert(t, str)
        end
        return t
end

input_string = 'this is it'

base_table = mysplit(input_string, " ")

for i=2, #base_table do
        print(base_table[i])
end 

via: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7615129/102401