19 rjek@ennui:~ $ cat test.lua
foo = "foo1\nfoo2\nfoo3"
t = {}
for w in string.gmatch(foo, "[^\n]+") do
        table.insert(t, w)
end

for i, v in ipairs(t) do
        print(i, " = ", v)
end

20 rjek@ennui:~ $ lua5.1 ./test.lua
1        =      foo1
2        =      foo2
3        =      foo3