You already have the solution in the question — the only way is to iterate the whole table with pairs(..)
.
function tablelength(T)
local count = 0
for _ in pairs(T) do count = count + 1 end
return count
end
Also, notice that the “#” operator’s definition is a bit more complicated than that. Let me illustrate that by taking this table:
t = {1,2,3}
t[5] = 1
t[9] = 1
According to the manual, any of 3, 5 and 9 are valid results for #t
. The only sane way to use it is with arrays of one contiguous part without nil values.