Table compare

[Enrico Colombini <erix@...>]

Is there a better/simpler way to do a shallow table compare (meaning 
that the two tables must have the same keys with identical values)?

function compareTables(t1, t2)
    -- all key-value pairs in t1 must be in t2
    for k, v in pairs(t1) do
        if t2[k] ~= v then return false end
    end
    -- there must not be other keys in t2
    for k, v in pairs(t2) do
        if t1[k] == nil then return false end
    end
    return true
end

  Enrico