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> To be accurate (to avoid confusion for newbies...), if the n field of
> the table hasn't been changed, table.getn() returns the largest
> integer key when counting consecutive indexes from 1.
> I feel this sentence can be better formulated...
>
> In other words, the array part of a table only have consecutive
> positive integer keys starting at 1. Any other positive integer key,
> if there is a gap, isn't seen as index of the array.

Beware that "unpack" also uses luaL_getn to determine the number of
elements.  This can come as a surprise in situations like the following:

    -- catch return values...
    local results = { f() }

    -- do some more stuff here

    -- return results of f()
    return unpack(results)

This will drop all return values after the first nil...  In this case you
could use a function "pack":

    function pack(...)
        return arg
    end

    local results = pack(f())

    -- etc. etc.


--
Wim