When I do #Table it keep saying 0, although it has many contents

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#1

I have a table, lets call Table. I have ~16 other tables in it. When i do

for i,v in pairs(Table) do
print(v)
end

it’ll print ~16 items.
When i do #Table, it says 0. I have no idea whats wrong. Heres a pic
Here is the output of when i print the contents and at the bottom you can see it says 0 which is the print(#Table)

https://gyazo.com/d64f4930adbd714c1deafbdd9be941fb

2 Likes
#2

I think you meant to do print(Table[i]).

So you don’t have to use a pairs loop

for i = 1, #Table do
    print(Table[i])
end
1 Like
#3

The reason this is happening is, keys would not count when using the # operator. For that reason I assume you have these 16 tables set in a dictionarry. Can you send the code or the table’s layout please? Here is a post that explains things really well

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#4

Do you mind sending a pic of what you put in the table?

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#6

So I understand now that someone told me it only works for integer indices. So i’ll tell you what i’m tryna do. The table is set via a lot of random stuff so I cant exactly show it so i’ll give an examplek

Table = {
[“Item1”] = {[“blah”] = 1},
[“Item2”] = {[“blah”] = 2}
}

What I want is to select a random table from within the dictionary thing. So I am doing Table[math.random(1,#Table)] and it is saying that there its empty.

#7

First of all, keys are not presented as integers as you said, so even if you knew how many tables there are, Table[math.random(1,#Table)] isn’t valid, beacuse it’s looking for a random integer, and here we have keys.

I guess here is what you can do!

Use this function to know how many keys there are

function len(tab)
    local sum = 0
    for _, v in pairs(tab) do
        sum = sum + 1
    end
    return sum
end

And since all the tables are named "ItemN" where N is the number of the table, you can do this

print(Table["Item"..tostring(math.random(1, len(Table)))])

Or you can do simply what @VegetationBush said, but you will need the len function that I gave you to find out how many keys there are

1 Like
#8

Try:

tonumber(Table)

Im unsure why #Table isn’t working for you though.

#9

But didn’t he say he was getting this whilst printing it normally?

#10

You put a dictionary inside a dictionary inside a table!

Try this:

Table = {
[1] = {[“blah”] = 1},
[2] = {[“blah”] = 2}
}
#11

What you can do is obtain the needed info from the original table and put them in an array, then use math.random on that array:

local newArray = {}
for index,value in pairs(Table) do
    table.insert(newArray, value["blah"])
end

print(newArray[math.random(1, #newArray)])

Or you can re-arrange the table differently to make it an array:

Table = {
   {"Item1"; ["blah"] = 1};
   {"Item2"; ["blah"] = 2};
}
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#12

Yeah I am just gonna have to do that i suppose

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#13

The length operator does not account for string indices in tables. If you wanted to, you can use metatables:

local mt = {
    __len = function(tbl)
      local count = 0
      for index, value in pairs(tbl) do
        count = count + 1
      end
      return count
    end
}

local Table = {
    ["Item1"] = {1};
    ["Item2"] = {2};
    ["Item3"] = {3};
}

setmetatable(Table, mt)

print(#Table)
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#14

Just a little mistake: __len doesn’t respect tables in the version of lua that’s roblox uses

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