saving indexes of strings in lua tables (arrays or dictionary table?)

Question

So I have quite a dilemma. I have a code that reads a certain msg, for example:

m.content:sub(1,8) == 'Loot of ' then

reads:

01:50 Loot of a starving wolf: a dirty fur, a salad, 2 pancakes, 60 gold

Now I'm trying to make it insert into a table. The problem I have so far is that I can't make it count the type of string and compare it in the table to add its index.

For example:

t = {dirty fur="quantity of msgs that show this",insert a new msg="how many times haves appear}

What I have working so far is:

foreach newmessage m do
m.content:sub(1,8) == 'Loot of ' then

and then I'm just lost. I don't know how to create this table; it should be local, I believe, but the main problem I have with this is that I don't want to print it in pairs, I want to call the values from 1 to #table, in the order they were inserted. That's where my pain starts.

I want something like:

table msgs = {spear='100',something='2', ovni='123'}

so when I get this table (which I still can't make), I can call the same table for another function, that well I want to call table."xmsg" = quantity. I hope someone understands what I'm asking.

function loot()
foreach newmessage m do
        if m.type == MSG_INFO and m.content:sub(1,8) == 'Loot of ' then
        local content = (m.content:match('Loot of .-: (.+)')):token(nil,', ')
        for i,j in ipairs(content) do
       return content
         end
      end
   end
end

return msgs of this function :

{"3 gold coins"}
{"3 gold coins"}
{"nothing"}
{"6 gold coins", "a hand axe"}
{"12 gold coins", "a hand axe"}

Answer 1

TEST_LOG = [[
01:50 Loot of a starving wolf: a dirty fur, a large melon, a cactus
02:20 Loot of a giant: a large melon, an axe
03:30 You are on fire! Not really, this is just a test message
04:00 Loot of a starving wolf: a dirty fur, a tooth, a bundle of hair
04:00 Loot of a starving wolf: a dirty fur, a tooth, an axe
]]

ENEMY_LOOT_COUNTS = {}
LOOT_COUNTS = {}

for line in string.gmatch(TEST_LOG, "([^\n]+)\n") do
    local time, msg = string.match(line, "(%d%d:%d%d) (.+)$")
    if msg and msg:sub(1, 8) == "Loot of " then
        local enemy_name, contents = string.match(msg, "^Loot of a ([^:]+): (.+)$")
        local enemy_t = ENEMY_LOOT_COUNTS[enemy_name]
        if not enemy_t then
            enemy_t = {}
            ENEMY_LOOT_COUNTS[enemy_name] = enemy_t
        end
        local items = {}
        for item_name in string.gmatch(contents, "an? ([^,]+)") do
            items[#items+1] = item_name
            enemy_t[item_name] = (enemy_t[item_name] or 0)+1
            LOOT_COUNTS[item_name] = (LOOT_COUNTS[item_name] or 0)+1
        end
    else
        -- you can handle other messages here if you want
    end
end

for enemy_name, loot_counts in pairs(ENEMY_LOOT_COUNTS) do
    local s = "Enemy "..enemy_name.." dropped: "
    for item_name, item_count in pairs(loot_counts) do
        s = s..item_count.."x "..item_name..", "
    end
    print(s)
end

do
    local s = "Overall: "
    for item_name, item_count in pairs(LOOT_COUNTS) do
        s = s..item_count.."x "..item_name..", "
    end
    print(s)
end

I wanted to write a long answer to accompany this code, but I don't have the time right now, sorry. I'll do it later.