What is a for i=1,#table do loop?

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#1

Can someone explain to me what this loop is , I saw it in some code.

#2 
for i = 1, #table do

#table is just the number of things inside the table, it’s basically the same as saying

for i = 1, 5 do

assuming you have 5 things in the table

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#3

Is the # significant at all? Like does it do anything?

#4

Yes, #table returns the number of items in the table, while table returns the table itself

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#5

#table gives the length of table.
If table = {2, 5, 6, 10, 0}, then #table = 5.
Also, I would suggest naming your table tbl instead of table because table is a built-in library.

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#6

So will the loops run the same amount of times as the amount of variables in the table?

#7

Yes, so if you had 5 things inside of the table such as:

local myTable = {
     "Banana",
     "Orange",
     "Apple",
     "Carrot",
     "Tomato"
}

print(#myTable) --> 5

for i = 1, #myTable do
     print("Apples are nice") --This would print 5 times
end

for i = 1, 5 do
     print("Apples are nice") --This would also print 5 times
end
#8

The # is the length operator of lua, it can return how many letters are in a string by measuring how many bytes are in the string (1 byte = 1 letter) and returns the last index of a table (amount of elements in a table)

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#9

So it doesn’t actually return the number of items in the table, but returns the index of the last item?

#10

The last index of a table is the amount of elements in a table
if t[i+1] == nil then t[i] is the last index, t being the table and i being the index since you cant go any further

edit: this is the way lua finds how many elements are in a table because how else would it do it

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