Lua persistent tables

[Steven Frank <stevenf@...>]

I ported the Lua persistent tables example:

http://lua-users.org/wiki/PersistentTables

...to Lua 5.0, but I noticed there is a fundamental flaw -- the 
__newindex metamethod is only called if the current value at the index 
is nil.

Ie; it only works if you do this:

persistent_table[0] = nil
persistent_table[0] = "new value"

If you miss the first line, and that index already has a value, the new 
value doesn't get saved...   Any ideas?

Steven