How would I get the key of a dictionary in a better way?

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#1

At the moment I have a dictionary. I need to grab the key from the dictionary. But I have a function for that already.
Shown here:

function ReturnTableKeyName(tbl, val)
    --Returns the key in a table.
    print(blocked)
    for k, v in pairs(tbl) do
            if v == val then
                return k
            end
        end
   
	return nil
end

The problem though, is if multiple keys have the same value it will return only one of them.

For example:

local d = {
	one = 1,
	two = 1,
	three = 1,
}

--pretend this is a for loop
for blah blah blah do
	print(ReturnTableKeyName(d, 1)) --This would always return only one of these, not all three.
end

Is there any way to fix this problem?

#2

I’m not sure what you’re trying to do here. Are you trying to get the key or the value?
Otherwise to get a specific value of a key in a table this should suffice.
tbl[key]

#3

I’m trying to get the key. Currently the function uses a value and determines the key from that value.

#4

To get all keys with a specific value you’d probably have to loop through the entire table and return an array of keys, instead of returning the first key you find with that value, as that will always return one key.

1 Like
#5

Ah yes! I totally forgot about returning an array. That’ll probably work, thanks!

1 Like
#6

you would just make a table of the answers, like this:

function ReturnTableKeyName(tbl, val)
    --Returns the key in a table.
    print(blocked)

	local keytable = {}

    for k, v in pairs(tbl) do
            if v == val then
                table.insert(keytable, k)
            end
        end
	
	if #keytable > 0 then
		return keytable
	else
		return nil
	end
end
1 Like