Table Managment

How would you go about making tables containing tables. For example:

countries={
france={"Paris", "Nantes", "Bourges"},
england={"london, "Big Ben"},
germany={"berlin", …ect}
}


Can you also still have it so I could search the countries array by user input? Example:

io.write("input: ")
input=io.read()
i=1
while countries[i] do
    if countries[i]==input then
    print("found")
    break
    end
i=i+1
end

With a table the way you have it such as

local countries = {france = {"lala","wut?"}, germany = {"one","two,}}

You need to use this to find the names of the countries, i.e. france and germany.

for country,cities in pairs(countries) do --#Since your table uses the country name as a key and not a value you have to do this to get the name of the key
  if country == input then
    print("Found!")
    break
  end
end

Thanks! I'm not sure I understand how it works so I guess Ill have to look into iterators. (I think thats whats going on here?) How could you go about printing the the strings inside the "input" table if its found it.

Thanks again for the help. I'm trying to learn lua in my spare time and it can be frustrating lol.

HunterForce, on 05 October 2014 - 04:50 AM said:

Thanks! I'm not sure I understand how it works so I guess Ill have to look into iterators. (I think thats whats going on here?) How could you go about printing the the strings inside the "input" table if its found it.

Thanks again for the help. I'm trying to learn lua in my spare time and it can be frustrating lol.

Here's a simple version of Dragon53535's code, this also prints the cities

if countries[input:lower()] then
	print( "Found!" )
	for _, city in pairs( countries[input:lower()] ) do
		print( city )
	end
end

As you can see, I'm using input:lower() and this basically converts the input from example "HeLLo WOrLD!" to "hello world!"
When using the colon syntax I can do this

input:lower()

instead of this

string.lower( input )

Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for! Especially the tip for input:lower(). You guys are fantastic!