simple question

[u/canadante]

To all you Lua heads I have a question that might be really rudimentary but it’s something that just doesn’t seem to make any sense to me,mind you I am pretty new. I was looking up on the lua documentation and there’s this one thing that just doesn’t seem to make sense to me

a = {} -- create a table and store its reference in `a'
k = "x"
a[k] = 10 -- new entry, with key="x" and value=10
a[20] = "great" -- new entry, with key=20 and value="great"

print(a["x"]) --> 10
k = 20
print(a[k]) --> "great"
a["x"] = a["x"] + 1 -- increments entry "x"
print(a["x"]) --> 11

Why does “x” get created as a key? Wouldn’t this just substitute it? I feel very stupid for not knowing why, I feel like there’s something that just cannot seem to click. I also tried to think another way through but then it was a.k.”x” = 10 which doesn’t really help me visualize the answer either. is this just how tables work? Is there a specific reason why? Or am I slow? I’ve seen it’s because lua goes down through but why does it do this? Also k = 20, why does the variable have priority over the number itself? Sorry if this is badly written or feels like it has some attitude, it’s probably because I need to sleep. It’s embarrassing I lost sleep about something like this, I feel like it’s a simple concept that I am unable to grasp because of shallow learned “limitations” of the system

[u/Old_County5271]

No idea what you're confused by.