This function creates a new, empty table and pushes it onto the stack.

To read a value from a table that resides somewhere in the stack, call

To store a value into a table that resides somewhere in the stack, you push the key and then the value onto the stack, and call

where index points to the table. pops from the stack both the key and the value. The table is left where it was in the stack. As in Lua, this operation may trigger a metamethod for the “settable” or “newindex” events. To set the real value of any table index, without invoking any metamethod, use the raw version:

where index points to the table to be traversed. The function pops a key from the stack, and pushes a key-value pair from the table (the “next” pair after the given key). If there are no more elements, then lua_next returns 0 (and pushes nothing). Use a nil key to signal the start of a traversal.

A typical traversal looks like this: