Re: Table with text keys question

[Geoff Leyland <geoff_leyland@...>]

On 19/10/2009, at 4:46 PM, Morita, Bill wrote:

> I have an issue I do not seem to find a reasonable solution to in  
> Lua 5.1
> I wish to dynamically generate text keys and then put them in a  
> table to be retrieved by a generated text key.
>
> The nature of Lua is such that, while text keys are supported, they  
> can only be set in the source code.
> Because everything is an object in lua, two separate instances of  
> x=”abc” will generated different objects and
> Thus a[x] = 1  cannot be retrieved by a later by a[x] where x was re- 
> assigned (even to the same string).
>
> There does not seem a function to “de-objectify” a value, nor does  
> there seem to be a way to dynamically execute a generated statement.
>
> Perhaps there is something I fail to understand.
>
> Thanks

Hi Bill,

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean, but if it helps, all of  
the following work:

Lua 5.1.4  Copyright (C) 1994-2008 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> a = "abc"
> x = {}
> x[a] = 13
> =x[a]
13
> =x.abc
13
> =x["abc"]
13
> b = "abc"
> =x[b]
13

Cheers,
Geoff