Question

I have the following lua table :

t = {name=”sandy”, age=”22″, major=”computerScience”}

I want to iterate over it, both methods below do NOT work

Method 1

function printAssociateTable(t) print(“before the loop”) for i,v
in ipairs(t) do
print(v) end end

Method 2

function printAssociateTable2(t) print(“before the loop”) for k in
ipairs(t) do
print(“before the loop”)
print(k.. ” is ” ..t.k) end end

when I call either methods, they print “before the loop”. so the problem the program is not entering the loop !

i tried to manually access the table, if i do this :

return t.name
=> gives sandy

return t[name]
=> gives nil

return t[“name”]
=> gives sandy !

how can i iterate over my table ? kindly note that both methods work well with a simple array like this

a={“a”,”b”,”c”,”d”}

but i want it to work on my associative array

Answer 1

The ipairs iterator selects only the array elements with integer keys. To iterate over all keys you require pairs, like this:

function printAssociateTable(t)
  print("before the loop")
  for i,v in pairs(t) do
    print(v)
  end
end