get nested table result in lua

I have a table A that contain the following

for i,v in pairs(Tab开发者_StackOverflowle A) do print (i,v) end

1    a
2    table : 50382A03     -- table B
3    hi 

. Is there a way that I can get the table B value to be print out while I m printing the parent table A, or i can store it and print it again using the same function?.

thanks Jp

When the question contains "nested", the answer will probably contain recursion:

function printTable(t)

    function printTableHelper(t, spacing)
        for k,v in pairs(t) do
            print(spacing..tostring(k), v)
            if (type(v) == "table") then 
                printTableHelper(v, spacing.."\t")
            end
        end
    end

    printTableHelper(t, "");
end

Just beware of circular references.

A bit changed function for better output and abstraction:

function printTableHelper(t,spacing)
    local spacing = spacing or ''

    if type(t)~='table' then
        print(spacing..tostring(t))
    else
        for k,v in pairs(t) do
            print(spacing..tostring(k),v)
            if type(v)=='table' then 
                printTableHelper(v,spacing..'\t')
            end
        end
    end
end

printTableHelper({'a',{'b'},'c'})

Just head on to the lua-users wiki page on table serialization and choose your champion. For example the following code handles everything including cycles in tables (local a={}; a.t = a):

-- alt version2, handles cycles, functions, booleans, etc
--  - abuse to http://richard.warburton.it
-- output almost identical to print(table.show(t)) below.
function print_r (t, name, indent)
  local tableList = {}
  function table_r (t, name, indent, full)
    local serial=string.len(full) == 0 and name
        or type(name)~="number" and '["'..tostring(name)..'"]' or '['..name..']'
    io.write(indent,serial,' = ') 
    if type(t) == "table" then
      if tableList[t] ~= nil then io.write('{}; -- ',tableList[t],' (self reference)\n')
      else
        tableList[t]=full..serial
        if next(t) then -- Table not empty
          io.write('{\n')
          for key,value in pairs(t) do table_r(value,key,indent..'\t',full..serial) end 
          io.write(indent,'};\n')
        else io.write('{};\n') end
      end
    else io.write(type(t)~="number" and type(t)~="boolean" and '"'..tostring(t)..'"'
                  or tostring(t),';\n') end
  end
  table_r(t,name or '__unnamed__',indent or '','')
end