Print Table Contents In Developer Console

Feature Requests Engine Features
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#1

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to view the contents of a table or dictionary in-game by printing it to the output.

The Studio output will display the contents of a table:
image
But the in-game developer console only prints the memory address, which isn’t helpful for debugging:
image

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because I would be able to find issues in my games much more quickly.

32 Likes
#2

is there any fix yet? i have the same problem in the developer console.

#3

I actually made a function that prints a table input as a string itself, meaning it can be displayed in other places as well:

--[=[
	Converts a table to a string, useful for displaying tables on GUI's. This is compatible with nested tables, dictionaries, and arrays. Example:

	```lua
	local MyTable = {"This table", "was converted into", 1, "string", "!"}

	print(Utility.TableToString(MyTable, ", "))
	-- Output: {[1] = "This table", [2] = "was converted into", [3] = 1, [4] = "string", [5] = "!"}
	```

	@param t {[any]: any} -- The table to convert to a string.
	@param sep string? -- The separator between each key + value
	@param i number? -- The index to start at. (only applies to arrays)
	@param j number? -- The index to end at. (only applies to arrays)

	@return string?
]=]
function Utility.TableToString(t: {[any]: any}, sep: string?, i: number?, j: number?): string?
	if Utility.IsDictionary(t) then
		Utility.dictionaryLen(t)
	end

	if #t == 0 then
		return "{}"
	end

	local stringToConvert = "{"

	sep = Utility.nilparam(sep, ", ")
	i = Utility.nilparam(i, 1)
	j = Utility.nilparam(j, #t)

	if not Utility.IsDictionary(t) then
		if i <= 0 or i > #t then
			Debugger.error(`Field 'i' must be greater than 0 and less than or equal to {#t}.`)
			return
		end

		if j <= 0 or j > #t then
			Debugger.error(`Field 'j' must be greater than 0 and less than or equal to {#t}.`)
			return
		end
	end

	if Utility.IsDictionary(t) then
		local current = 0

		for key, value in t do
			current += 1
			if type(value) == "string" then
				value = `"{value}"`
			end
			if type(value) == "table" then
				value = Utility.TableToString(value, sep)
			end
			if current == #t then
				stringToConvert = `{stringToConvert}["{key}"] = {value}}`
			else
				stringToConvert = `{stringToConvert}["{key}"] = {value}{sep}`
			end
		end

		return stringToConvert
	end

	for index = i :: number, j :: number do
		local value = t[index]
		if type(value) == "string" then
			value = `"{value}"`
		end
		if type(value) == "table" then
			value = Utility.TableToString(value, sep)
		end
		if index == j then
			stringToConvert = `{stringToConvert}[{index}] = {value}}`
		else
			stringToConvert = `{stringToConvert}[{index}] = {value}{sep}`
		end
	end

	return stringToConvert
end
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