How to iterate through table in Lua?

To iterate over all the key-value pairs in a table you can use pairs:

for k, v in pairs(arr) do
  print(k, v[1], v[2], v[3])
end

outputs:

pears   2   p   green
apples  0   a   red
oranges 1   o   orange

Edit: Note that Lua doesn't guarantee any iteration order for the associative part of the table. If you want to access the items in a specific order, retrieve the keys from arr and sort it. Then access arr through the sorted keys:

local ordered_keys = {}

for k in pairs(arr) do
    table.insert(ordered_keys, k)
end

table.sort(ordered_keys)
for i = 1, #ordered_keys do
    local k, v = ordered_keys[i], arr[ ordered_keys[i] ]
    print(k, v[1], v[2], v[3])
end

outputs:

  apples  a   red     5
  oranges o   orange  12
  pears   p   green   7

If you want to refer to a nested table by multiple keys you can just assign them to separate keys. The tables are not duplicated, and still reference the same values.

arr = {}
apples = {'a', "red", 5 }
arr.apples = apples
arr[1] = apples

This code block lets you iterate through all the key-value pairs in a table (http://lua-users.org/wiki/TablesTutorial):

for k,v in pairs(t) do
 print(k,v)
end

For those wondering why ipairs doesn't print all the values of the table all the time, here's why (I would comment this, but I don't have enough good boy points).

The function ipairs only works on tables which have an element with the key 1. If there is an element with the key 1, ipairs will try to go as far as it can in a sequential order, 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 etc until it cant find an element with a key that is the next in the sequence. The order of the elements does not matter.

Tables that do not meet those requirements will not work with ipairs, use pairs instead.

Examples:

ipairsCompatable = {"AAA", "BBB", "CCC"}
ipairsCompatable2 = {[1] = "DDD", [2] = "EEE", [3] = "FFF"}
ipairsCompatable3 = {[3] = "work", [2] = "does", [1] = "this"}

notIpairsCompatable = {[2] = "this", [3] = "does", [4] = "not"}
notIpairsCompatable2 = {[2] = "this", [5] = "doesn't", [24] = "either"}

ipairs will go as far as it can with it's iterations but won't iterate over any other element in the table.

kindofIpairsCompatable = {[2] = 2, ["cool"] = "bro", [1] = 1, [3] = 3, [5] = 5 }

When printing these tables, these are the outputs. I've also included pairs outputs for comparison.

ipairs + ipairsCompatable
1       AAA
2       BBB
3       CCC

ipairs + ipairsCompatable2
1       DDD
2       EEE
3       FFF

ipairs + ipairsCompatable3
1       this
2       does
3       work

ipairs + notIpairsCompatable

pairs + notIpairsCompatable
2       this
3       does
4       not

ipairs + notIpairsCompatable2

pairs + notIpairsCompatable2
2       this
5       doesnt
24      either

ipairs + kindofIpairsCompatable
1       1
2       2
3       3

pairs + kindofIpairsCompatable
1       1
2       2
3       3
5       5
cool    bro

How to iterate through table in Lua?

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