How to remove values from a table using another table

IceCreamPickels · February 15, 2025, 6:07am

is there a simple way to remove values from a table using another table?
besides looping through both tables to remove individual elements one at a time?

local mainTable = { "apple", "banana", "cherry", "orange", "blueberry" }
local removeTable = { "banana", "orange" }

then the result would be

newTable = { "apple", "cherry", "blueberry" }

IceCreamPickels · February 15, 2025, 6:18am

i couldnt find anything but so far this

for i, v in pairs(removeTable) do
    for j, w in pairs(mainTable) do
        if w == v then
            table.remove(mainTable, j)
        end
    end
end

quakage · February 15, 2025, 7:21am

J_Angry:

for i, fruit in pairs(mainTable) do -- loops through mainTable
	if table.find(removeTable, fruit) then -- table.find() checks if fruit matches with any values inside of removeTable
		table.remove(mainTable, i) -- if true, we remove the fruit from mainTable
	end
end

This code won’t work for the following input:

local removeTable = { "banana", "orange", "apple" }

If you want to use table.find you’d need to do something like this:

for i=#mainTable,1,-1 do
	if table.find(removeTable, mainTable[i]) then
		table.remove(mainTable, i)
	end
end