Creating Table of Unique Items

I've been searching for a few hours now, and haven't figured out how to go about populating a list within a loop, accepting only unique values.

Test code:

myList = {}
while true do
	 print(“insert:”)
	 item = read()
	 if item ~= nil and ~= myList[item] then
		  table.insert(myList,item)
	 end
	 for i = 0, #myList do
		  print(myList[i])
	 end
end

This obviously doesn't work, but I'm at a loss as to how to check if the item is already in the list or not.

Just store the items as the key instead of the value, then use a pairs loop to list them all.

myList = {}
while true do
		 print(“insert:”)
		 local item = read()
		 myList[item] = myList[item] or true
		 for k,v in pairs(myList) do
				  print(k)
		 end
end

CometWolf, on 23 March 2014 - 10:02 PM said:

		 myList[item] = myList[item] or true

What is the 'or true' bit doing?

it's a quicker way of writing

if not myList[item] then
  myList[item] = true
end

Basically what it does is check myList[item] for a value, if there is none there (nil or false) it will move on to the variable following the or statement, and do the same there. Since it's true, it will be considered a valid value, and be stored in the table.

That is to say, it's a more complex way of writing:

myList[item] = true

:P/>

(Well, to be clear, it doesn't technically do exactly that - but within the context of the rest of the code block, that'll always be the end result.)

Lol yeah that's true ,it's not really needed since it's storing the same variable anyways.