Thanks for these bite-sized lessons Girish, makes it easier for one to
get on-board with Lua. Looking forward to the next write up in this series
Vatsala
On Monday 07 January 2013 12:49 PM, Girish Venkatachalam wrote:
> If you understand lua tables then you know lua.
>
> So obviously we are not there yet.
>
> Just like perl implements modules, packages and namespaces using the
> OO and reference concept,
> lua does everything using tables or dictionaries or hashes or
> associative arrays.
>
> All are same.
>
> A table is a name value pair. Not just in lua but in everything.
>
> We have lookup tables even in hardware.
>
> In programming a hash table is very popular. One key and one value.
> The value can be a reference to
> an aggregate data structure like arrays or even other tables.
>
> If you have been with me so far(I covered a lot of ground in this
> intro) then good.
>
> Otherwise don't worry. You can learn as you go along.
>
> Let us look at a simple lua table.
>
> Just type lua like python. Both have interactive shells.
>
> $ lua
> Lua 5.1.5 Copyright (C) 1994-2012 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
>> tablex={2,3,4,5,100}
>> table.foreach(tablex,print)
> 1 2
> 2 3
> 3 4
> 4 5
> 5 100
>> tabhash={name="Girish", job="Software engineer", hobby="LUG"}
>> table.foreach(tabhash,print)
> hobby LUG
> name Girish
> job Software engineer
> You see the idea?
>
> You can type this code also.
>
> $ cat learntable
> #!/usr/local/bin/lua
>
> t={2,3, 5, name="LUG", age=10}
>
> for k,v in pairs(t) do
> print(k,v)
> end
>
>
> We have learnt a few iterator constructs in lua for printing all the
> elements in a table.
>
> It is a composite data type like all scripting languages.
>
> A table can contain anything. It does not care about data type.
>
> -Girish
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