4 ms·

Lua tables accept arbitrary objects as keys, and make a difference between `foo[1]` and `foo["1"]`. Plus all the metatables goodies: weak key and/or value refe

• jschwartzi 11y ago
  They even mark the difference to the degree that foo[1] is stored in a special "array part" of the table, while foo["1"] ends up in the hash part. Predictably, the array part uses less memory.
• thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > Lua tables accept arbitrary objects as keys, and make a difference between `foo[1]` and `foo["1"]`. That sounds... completely normal? Python dictionaries will do that too. So will Java HashMaps.
  • sirclueless 11y ago
    That comment was responding to a comment about PHP and JS, both of which do not make such a distinction.
  • seabee 11y ago
    There is another subtlety that values associated with integer keys are stored as an array. dicts and HashMaps don't do this.
    • adrusi 11y ago
      And not even all integer keys! Lua will efficiently handle sparse arrays using tables.