What is the Difference of Tables and Meta Tables and what can we use them for?

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#1

What are the differences from them both?

and also, what is lua and luau and are they the same thing?

#2

Tables are simply used for storing multiple values. -Tables | Roblox Creator Documentation

Metatables are just a way to edit tables into becoming more powerful and have more usage/functionality. - Metatables | Roblox Creator Documentation, here’s a really good post explaining it too: All you need to know about Metatables and Metamethods

Lua is the original coding language, while luau is a roblox edit of lua. Nothing too much to know about it.

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#3

What are Ipairs() for?

what do people use it for?

#4

pairs() and ipairs() are functions that can be used with a for loop to go through each element of an array or dictionary without needing to set starting or ending points. pairs() is used with dictionaries , and ipairs() is used with arrays . The “i” in ipairs() stands for “index.” - https://education.roblox.com/en-us/resources/pairs-and-ipairs-intro

They are used to loop thru a table/dictionairy that hold multiple stuff, so it’s easier to iterate thru everything inside a dictionairy.

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#5

Thanks for telling me!

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#6

So would it be something like this?

for i = ipairs(10) do
   wait(0.5)
   speed.Value = speed.Value + 1
end

if the speed was 0 before this and then they hold down space then each 0.5 seconds the player should have 10 speed at the end right?
#7

Ah, nope, I don’t think that does any function, if you’re trying to loop speed.Value to change:

for 1, 10 do
  speed.Value += 1
  wait(1)
end

This will increase speed’s value every second by 1.

As mentioned before, pairs() and ipairs() are functions that can be used with a for loop to go through each element of an array or dictionary without needing to set starting or ending points.

Say, you have a model and you want to go thru every child of that model you should do:

for i, child in pairs(game.Workspace.Model:GetChildren()) do -- Iterate every child
  child.Transparency = 1 -- Set found child to transparency 1
end

“i” will be the amount of times that it’ll loop, but setting it to just “i” or “_” means we won’t have a end point, it’ll keep looping until no children are found.

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#8

metatable is just a table ,with events.

local TableWithEvents = {
__index = function()
      print("hello world")
end
}
local EmptyTable = {}
setmetatable(EmptyTable,TableWithEvents)
EmptyTable[1]--picking empty index ,which fires __index function ,in a metatable