Decode Ascii string values from reverse-engineered lua file

Question

I decompiled a lua file with unluac and it turns out all the string variables are not readable and are instead ascii encoded

clues = {
  {
    answer = {
      "\216\173",
      "\216\177",
      "\216\168",
      "\216\167",
      "\216\161"
    },
    text = "\216\173\217\138\217\136\216\167\217\134\032\216\178\216\167\216\173\217\129\032\217\138\216\186\217\138\216\177\032\217\132\217\136\217\134\032\216\172\217\132\216\175\217\135",
    syllables = {
      {"\216\173", "\216\177"},
      {"\216\168", "\216\167"},
      {"\216\161"}
    }

How do i go about decoding the whole file ignoring any non ascii characters in python or java?

Answer 1

How do i go about decoding the whole file ignoring any non ascii characters in python or java?

did you consider replacing the symbols? You can use a regex as simple as that one:

\\\d{3}

To find all values to replace. For example, this does the trick in python:

text = r"""clues = {
  {
    answer = {
      "\216\173",
      "\216\177",
      "\216\168",
      "\216\167",
      "\216\161"
    },
    text = "\216\173\217\138\217\136\216\167\217\134\032\216\178\216\167\216\173\217\129\032\217\138\216\186\217\138\216\177\032\217\132\217\136\217\134\032\216\172\217\132\216\175\217\135",
    syllables = {
      {"\216\173", "\216\177"},
      {"\216\168", "\216\167"},
      {"\216\161"}
  }"""
import re

def decode(match):
    code = int(match.group(1))
    return chr(code)

print re.sub(r'\\(\d{3})', decode, text)

Also, please note that this is Extended ASCII and not ASCII per se.