Explicit expressions are presented for general branching functions for cosets of affine Lie algebras ĝ with respect to subalgebras ĝ′ for the cases where the corresponding finite-dimensional algebras g and g′ are such that g is simple and g′ is either simple or sums of u(1) terms. A special case of the latter yields the string functions. Our derivation is purely algebraical and has its origin in the results on the BRST cohomology presented by us earlier. We will here give an independent and simple proof of the validity of our results. The method presented here generalizes in a straightforward way to more complicated g and g′ such as sums of simple and u(1) terms.