why does sorting a table in Lua doesn't work

Question

I have a piece of Lua code that generate an error and I don't understand how to solve it.

  .............................
 local last_num = 0 
 local  channelTable={} 
 for num in channels.each_number() do  --  channels.each_number() returns 1.number  in each call 
  channelTable[last_num] =num;
  last_num = last_num +1;
 end    
 table.sort(channelTable);

based on lua documentation I can use the function sort to sort the saved numbers in channelTable. the error that I get is:

attempt to index global 'table'

Any idea how can I solve this, or should implement bubble sort? thanks for any hint!

Can you run a simple script separately that prints out the _G table? That'll at least tell us if table and other standard lua facilities are available in your environment. — greatwolf
– greatwolf, Commented Jan 5, 2015 at 22:34

lhf · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-05 12:13:12Z

2

Either you haven't loaded the table library or you have overwritten it by accident.

The error message seems truncated: it should say why indexing failed.

answered Jan 5, 2015 at 12:13

lhf

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4 Comments

Engine Over a year ago

that the error message that I get, I'm using Lua on a HTML page run on ARM9. and that all I get the rest of the error message is only about the path of the lua file, how can load the table ? by the way thanks for your answer !

lhf Over a year ago

@Engine, there should be (a xxx value) at the end of the message.

Engine Over a year ago

thant a lot for you help but No : I'm using haserl CGI !

Engine Over a year ago

thanks again for your the lib was explecitly rejected, I didn't know since I didn't stared the project !

Alan · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-05 12:13:58Z

1

The error you are seeing indicates that the table library is not available. It's unlikely that this core library isn't part of your Lua environment, so it's likely you have assigned something to table elsewhere in your code.

answered Jan 5, 2015 at 12:13

Alan

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2 Comments

Engine Over a year ago

thanks for your answer, is there away to load it explicitly using the require statement

Alan Over a year ago

As I understand it, the base libraries are built into the Lua interpreter at compile time, and can't be loaded as modules, as there is no library to look in to find them. I could be completely wrong though - I've never used a Lua environment where the table library wasn't available. What do you get if you try: print(table); to see what the name refers to?

user3413723 · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-05 12:12:13Z

0

I think the issue may be that you are expecting channels.each_number() to be called in each iteration of the loop. If I'm not mistaken, I think it only gets called the first time the program goes through the loop. Whatever you use in thefor..in loop needs to be a table, I believe. So I guess the problem is that your table isn't being generated as you want it to. Try doing this:

print('number of items in channelTable = ' .. #channelTable)

If it comes out to 0, then what I said is probably the problem.

answered Jan 5, 2015 at 12:12

user3413723

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1 Comment

Engine Over a year ago

No defintly not the code works exactly the way I want when out comment the table line

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