List

The List function lists the contents of a variable list of objects consisting of numbers, strings, tables, etc. Tables may contain nested tables. Each value or table element is listed on a new line and table elements are intented at the level of the table.

Syntax

List( ... )

where

... is a list of numbers, strings, tables, or other Lua types.

This function uses the Lua pairs function to access all table elements, without requiring each succesive table index to exist. As a result, the table elements are listed in an arbitrary order. Note that you do not need to use integral values as the table indices (see "blarney" in Example 1, below).

Example 1

The following script creates a complex table and lists its contents. Of course, your tables need not be this complex:

local t={}
t[5] = TRand(3)	-- table at index 5 has 3 random numbers
t[3] = TRand(4)	-- table at index 3 has 4 random numbers
t[2] = {}	-- create a subtable at table index 2
t[2][1] = t[5]	-- subtable is identical to t[5]
t[2]["blarney"] = t[3]	-- subtable is identical to t[3]
t[6] = {"howdy","doody","time"}	-- subtable at index 6 has 3 strings
List(t,5,"My string")	-- List the table and 2 other values

The results from List() look as follows. Table element 3 is listed as [3], and so on. Each table level has a larger indent. Note that the table elements are not accessed in any particular order, which is normal when the table is not treated as an array:

[3]

{

0.894742

0.642079

0.824183

0.889676

}

[2]

{

[1]

{

0.320719

0.83578

0.686666

}

[blarney]

{

0.894742

0.642079

0.824183

0.889676

}

[6]

{

howdy

doody

time

}

[5]

{

0.320719

0.83578

0.686666

}

My string

Example 2

The following script creates 2 tables and lists their contents.

X = TRand(5)	-- table of 5 random values between 0 and 1
Y = TRand(5,10,20)	-- table of 5 random values between 10 and 20
List(X,Y)	-- list the tables

The result from List() looks as follows. Note that each table has 5 elements:

0.1171

0.747124

0.616108

0.921049

0.203772

14.6348

17.5863

19.5666

16.9369

12.4473

Example 3

The following script creates 2 tables and lists their contents with a label above each table. This is the same script as in example 2 except that a string is printed before each table which says what is listed below it.

X = TRand(5)	-- table of 5 random values between 0 and 1
Y = TRand(5,10,20)	-- table of 5 random values between 10 and 20
List( "\nX data", X, "\nY data", Y )	-- also print a string before each table.

The result from List() looks as follows.

X data