Re: Lua 5.2 Length Operator and tables (bug?)

[chris <csrl@...>]

Matthew Wild <mwild1 <at> gmail.com> writes:
> Attempting to define explicitly undefined behaviour is just not a good
> idea. It will easily lead you down the road of portability and
> compatibility problems.

Could someone state what the *defined* behavior is?

The best I can come up with is:

The length operator, when used on a table, will only provide the length of the
table, if and only if, the table's only positive numeric indices's are a
sequence of {1..n}.  Non numeric indices's may also exist.  The existence of any
other numeric indices's invalidate the result of the length operator.  As such
you must know before hand whether or not a table conforms to these constraints
in order to make valid use of the length operator on a table.

Can anyone add to or improve upon that?

Thanks,

chris