RE: why doesnt a[1] = 1 work?

["Markus Heukelom" <Markus.Heukelom@...>]

> a = "" and a = "lua" are not declarations, they are assignments.
> You're assigning string values to the variable 'a', which may 
> or may not have had a value assigned to it previously.
> 
> a = {} is assigning a table value to the variable 'a', which 
> may or may not have had a value assigned to it previously.
> 
> If you try to use 'a' in an expression before a value has 
> been assigned to it, you will likely get an error. For 
> instance, if you say
> io.write(a) before assigning a value to 'a', you'll get an 
> error because io.write expects a value and you passed it nil. 
> Similarly, if you try to index 'a' (i.e. io.write(a[1]) or 
> a[1] = 1) before assigning a table value to it, you'll get en 
> error because you cannot index nil.

Thanks, but it doesn't answer may question completely though. I'll try to
put it more specifically:

a = "lua"
a[1]=1 	-- error: indexing a string value

a = nil
a[1]=1 	-- error: indexing a nil value

Yes, I understand this. I can't index anything but a table. 

But you could also read this as: assign a the table value {1=1}, if a is not
of type table. (Ofcourse, if a is a table the index would be
created/overwritten). 

Because lua is loosely typed, it feels a bit strange to 'declare' (between
quotes!) a table by first assigning it a (empty) table and then assign new
(key, value)-tuples to it.

As an example:

a = {}
for i=1,10 
	a[i]=math.random(10) 
end

I like the conciseness of lua, so I'd be glad to get rid of the a = {},
which just feels a little redundant here. Ofcourse, a = nil; print(a[1])
would still not compile.

I understand that this is maybe more of a feature request than a question
though...

Markus