How to dump a table to console?
I'm having trouble displaying the contents of a table which contains nested tables (n-deep). I'd like to just dump it to std out or the console via a print statement or something quick and dirty but I can't figure out how. I'm looking for the rough equivalent that I'd get when printing an NSDictionary using gdb.
I've found this one useful. Because if the recursion it can print nested tables too. It doesn't give the prettiest formatting in the output but for such a simple function it's hard to beat for debugging.
function dump(o)
if type(o) == 'table' then
local s = '{ '
for k,v in pairs(o) do
if type(k) ~= 'number' then k = '"'..k..'"' end
s = s .. '['..k..'] = ' .. dump(v) .. ','
end
return s .. '} '
else
return tostring(o)
end
end
e.g.
local people = {
{
name = "Fred",
address = "16 Long Street",
phone = "123456"
},
{
name = "Wilma",
address = "16 Long Street",
phone = "123456"
},
{
name = "Barney",
address = "17 Long Street",
phone = "123457"
}
}
print("People:", dump(people))
Produces the following output:
People: { [1] = { ["address"] = 16 Long Street,["phone"] = 123456,["name"] = Fred,} ,[2] = { ["address"] = 16 Long Street,["phone"] = 123456,["name"] = Wilma,} ,[3] = { ["address"] = 17 Long Street,["phone"] = 123457,["name"] = Barney,} ,}
I know this question has already been marked as answered, but let me plug my own library here. It's called inspect.lua, and you can find it here:
https://github.com/kikito/inspect.lua
It's just a single file that you can require from any other file. It returns a function that transforms any Lua value into a human-readable string:
local inspect = require('inspect')
print(inspect({1,2,3})) -- {1, 2, 3}
print(inspect({a=1,b=2})
-- {
-- a = 1
-- b = 2
-- }
It indents subtables properly, and handles "recursive tables" (tables that contain references to themselves) correctly, so it doesn't get into infinite loops. It sorts values in a sensible way. It also prints metatable information.
Regards!
Feel free to browse the Lua Wiki on table serialization. It lists several ways on how to dump a table to the console.
You just have to choose which one suits you best. There are many ways to do it, but I usually end up using the one from Penlight:
> t = { a = { b = { c = "Hello world!", 1 }, 2, d = { 3 } } }
> require 'pl.pretty'.dump(t)
{
a = {
d = {
3
},
b = {
c = "Hello world!",
1
},
2
}
}
found this:
-- Print contents of `tbl`, with indentation.
-- `indent` sets the initial level of indentation.
function tprint (tbl, indent)
if not indent then indent = 0 end
for k, v in pairs(tbl) do
formatting = string.rep(" ", indent) .. k .. ": "
if type(v) == "table" then
print(formatting)
tprint(v, indent+1)
elseif type(v) == 'boolean' then
print(formatting .. tostring(v))
else
print(formatting .. v)
end
end
end
from here https://gist.github.com/ripter/4270799
works pretty good for me...
Most pure lua print table functions I've seen have a problem with deep recursion and tend to cause a stack overflow when going too deep. This print table function that I've written does not have this problem. It should also be capable of handling really large tables due to the way it handles concatenation. In my personal usage of this function, it outputted 63k lines to file in about a second.
The output also keeps lua syntax and the script can easily be modified for simple persistent storage by writing the output to file if modified to allow only number, boolean, string and table data types to be formatted.
function print_table(node)
local cache, stack, output = {},{},{}
local depth = 1
local output_str = "{\n"
while true do
local size = 0
for k,v in pairs(node) do
size = size + 1
end
local cur_index = 1
for k,v in pairs(node) do
if (cache[node] == nil) or (cur_index >= cache[node]) then
if (string.find(output_str,"}",output_str:len())) then
output_str = output_str .. ",\n"
elseif not (string.find(output_str,"\n",output_str:len())) then
output_str = output_str .. "\n"
end
-- This is necessary for working with HUGE tables otherwise we run out of memory using concat on huge strings
table.insert(output,output_str)
output_str = ""
local key
if (type(k) == "number" or type(k) == "boolean") then
key = "["..tostring(k).."]"
else
key = "['"..tostring(k).."']"
end
if (type(v) == "number" or type(v) == "boolean") then
output_str = output_str .. string.rep('\t',depth) .. key .. " = "..tostring(v)
elseif (type(v) == "table") then
output_str = output_str .. string.rep('\t',depth) .. key .. " = {\n"
table.insert(stack,node)
table.insert(stack,v)
cache[node] = cur_index+1
break
else
output_str = output_str .. string.rep('\t',depth) .. key .. " = '"..tostring(v).."'"
end
if (cur_index == size) then
output_str = output_str .. "\n" .. string.rep('\t',depth-1) .. "}"
else
output_str = output_str .. ","
end
else
-- close the table
if (cur_index == size) then
output_str = output_str .. "\n" .. string.rep('\t',depth-1) .. "}"
end
end
cur_index = cur_index + 1
end
if (size == 0) then
output_str = output_str .. "\n" .. string.rep('\t',depth-1) .. "}"
end
if (#stack > 0) then
node = stack[#stack]
stack[#stack] = nil
depth = cache[node] == nil and depth + 1 or depth - 1
else
break
end
end
-- This is necessary for working with HUGE tables otherwise we run out of memory using concat on huge strings
table.insert(output,output_str)
output_str = table.concat(output)
print(output_str)
end
Here is an example:
local t = {
["abe"] = {1,2,3,4,5},
"string1",
50,
["depth1"] = { ["depth2"] = { ["depth3"] = { ["depth4"] = { ["depth5"] = { ["depth6"] = { ["depth7"]= { ["depth8"] = { ["depth9"] = { ["depth10"] = {1000}, 900}, 800},700},600},500}, 400 }, 300}, 200}, 100},
["ted"] = {true,false,"some text"},
"string2",
[function() return end] = function() return end,
75
}
print_table(t)
Output:
{
[1] = 'string1',
[2] = 50,
[3] = 'string2',
[4] = 75,
['abe'] = {
[1] = 1,
[2] = 2,
[3] = 3,
[4] = 4,
[5] = 5
},
['function: 06472B70'] = 'function: 06472A98',
['depth1'] = {
[1] = 100,
['depth2'] = {
[1] = 200,
['depth3'] = {
[1] = 300,
['depth4'] = {
[1] = 400,
['depth5'] = {
[1] = 500,
['depth6'] = {
[1] = 600,
['depth7'] = {
[1] = 700,
['depth8'] = {
[1] = 800,
['depth9'] = {
[1] = 900,
['depth10'] = {
[1] = 1000
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
}
},
['ted'] = {
[1] = true,
[2] = false,
[3] = 'some text'
}
}