I will only answer question 1, as 2 and 3 should be separate questions. There are many ways to do this based on specifics you don't mention but assuming you have a table t like this:
t={
{["a"] = 2, ["b"] = 3, ["c"] = "IOS"},
{["a"] = 8, ["b"] = 9, ["c"] = "NVY"},
{["a"] = 1, ["b"] = 5, ["c"] = "CWQ"}
}
then a function that takes an a
key value to look for and returns b and c:
function findItem(a, yourTable)
for i,tt in ipairs(yourTable) do
if tt.a == a then
return i, tt.b, tt.c
end
end
end
With this, if the input is k, then
i, b, c = findItem(k, t)
if i == nil then
print('could not find k')
else
print('found k at index ' .. i)
end
The findItem
could of course just return the subtable found, and maybe you don't need index:
function findItem(a, yourTable)
for i,tt in ipairs(yourTable) do
if tt.a == a then
return tt
end
end
end