Tables and lists

[Gavin Wraith <gavin@...>]

Apologies if I am dragging a red herring across the path of the
hounds, here. I cannot help noticing a flurry of recent activity
on the subject of holes in tables, the definition of # etc.

I note that other programming languages make a distinction between
"lists" (indices a consecutive sequence of integers starting at 1 or
0 or whatever) and "hash tables", usually with strings as indices.
That Lua amalgamates and extends the two seems to me to be one of
its most interesting aspects. So how do others exploit this
amalgamation in their Lua programming?

For myself, I often have lists and then find it useful to add methods
to them - something that would not be so convenient if lists and hash
tables were separate notions. I tend to use the list simply as a stack,
with non-nil entries, so the hole problem never arises. But maybe I am
overlooking other useful ways of exploiting the amalgamation?

In any case it seems to me that it would be good PR for Lua if
in example code snippets those idioms which are currently unique to Lua
were to be highlighted.

-- 
Gavin Wraith (gavin@wra1th.plus.com)
Home page: http://www.wra1th.plus.com/