are you allowed to have a numeric key in a lua table?

dictionary, lua, lua-table

Solution

You need to put the numeric indices in brackets:

dyeColor = {
    [0]="black"     ,  black     = 0,
    [1]="red"       ,  red       = 1, 
    [2]="green"     ,  green     = 2,
    [3]="brown"     ,  brown     = 3,
    [4]="blue"      ,  blue      = 4,
    [5]="purple"    ,  purple    = 5,
    [6]="cyan"      ,  cyan      = 6,
    [7]="lightGray" ,  lightGray = 7,
    [8]="gray"      ,  gray      = 8,
    [9]="pink"      ,  pink      = 9,
    [10]="lime"     ,  lime      =10,
    [11]="yellow"   ,  yellow    =11,
    [12]="lightBlue",  lightBlue =12,
    [13]="magenta"  ,  magenta   =13,
    [14]="orange"   ,  orange    =14,
    [15]="white"    ,  white     =15}

You can save yourself some typing with:

dyeColor = {
    [0]="black"     ,
    [1]="red"       ,
    [2]="green"     ,
    [3]="brown"     ,
    [4]="blue"      ,
    [5]="purple"    ,
    [6]="cyan"      ,
    [7]="lightGray" ,
    [8]="gray"      ,
    [9]="pink"      ,
    [10]="lime"     ,
    [11]="yellow"   ,
    [12]="lightBlue",
    [13]="magenta"  ,
    [14]="orange"   ,
    [15]="white"    }

for i = 0, #dyeColor do dyeColor[dyeColor[i]] = i end

Lua permits `Name`s as `fieldspec`s in the form `Name = exp` but not numbers. Numbers must be in brackets. The same is true of field references. You may say

dyeColor.black

but not

dyeColor.0 -- you may say dyeColor[0] of course

Problem

Original source