Re: [manual] ipairs vs. #

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

2016-01-27 19:11 GMT+02:00 Stephan Hennig <sh-list@posteo.net>:

> The fact that iterating over table elements via ipairs and iterating over
> table indices 1 to #t are not equal operations has been discussed on
> this list before.  But it is neither mentioned in the section describing
> ipairs nor in the section describing the # operator.  I think this fact
> deserves more visibility in the manual.

The manual is very cute at saying enough, but only barely.

In this case it says

    will iterate over the key–value pairs (1,t[1]), (2,t[2]), ..., up to the
    first nil value.

The notation t[1] implies that __index is respected, the failure to
mention #t means that __len is ignored. Terse, but it has always
been like that.

You say this is actually documented in "Changes to the libraries"?
That's being absolutely verbose, then!