#table oddity?

[Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin@...>]

I have had this happen a couple of times to me.
I don't know if this how it is supposed to be and I am misunderstanding 
something.

> =items
table: 0x807e760
> printt(items)
0007126409      table: 0x8089bf0
0007164653      table: 0x80abf38
000215949X      table: 0x80ea8f0
0007157207      table: 0x80f52f0
000100039X      table: 0x80d3458
0007145160      table: 0x80d5348
0007744684      table: 0x80da320
0007133103      table: 0x80d9290
0007104065      table: 0x8092438
0007161069      table: 0x8096cc8
> =#items
0
>

I got tired of doing
for k,v in pairs(t) do print(k,v) end
so I assigned it to printt(t). :)

So I don't understand why I am getting a size of 0 for a table of 10 items?

Also I have lots of tables indexed by strings of digits as above.
But if I try to access them via

> =items.0007126409
stdin:1: '<eof>' expected near '.0007126409'

doesn't work, but this does.

> return items['0007126409']
table: 0x8089bf0

Any help understanding what I'm currently not understanding would be 
greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Jimmie