sorted serialization of lua objects.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5940117/is-there-an-program-that-can-sort-the-values-of-a-lua-program-output

lua/sorted-output.lua

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+
+-- from http://www.lua.org/pil/12.1.1.html, a bit modified
+-- and splitted to two met
+function serialize_sorted (o, indent)
+   if type(o) == "number" then
+      io.write(o)
+   elseif type(o) == "string" then
+      io.write(string.format("%q", o))
+   elseif type(o) == "boolean" then
+      io.write( o and "true" or "false" )
+   elseif type(o) == "table" then
+      io.write("{\n")
+      local subindent = indent .. "   "
+      for k,v in pairsByKeys(o) do
+         io.write(subindent)
+         io.write("  [")
+         serialize_sorted(k, subindent)
+         io.write("] = ")
+         serialize_sorted(v, subindent)
+         io.write(",\n")
+      end
+      io.write(indent .. "}")
+   else
+      error("cannot serialize a " .. type(o))
+   end
+end
+
+
+
+-- from http://www.lua.org/pil/19.3.html
+function pairsByKeys (t, f)
+   local a = {}
+   for n in pairs(t) do table.insert(a, n) end
+   table.sort(a, f)
+   local i = 0      -- iterator counter
+   local iter =  function ()   -- iterator function
+         i = i + 1
+         if a[i] == nil then return nil
+         else return a[i], t[a[i]]
+         end
+      end
+   return iter
+end
+
+
+
+testTable = {
+    ["2"] = {
+        ["Val1"] = true,
+        ["ValX"] = true,
+        ["Val2"] = true,
+        ["Val3"] = false,
+    },
+    ["1"] = {
+        ["ValX"] = true,
+        ["Val1"] = true,
+        ["Val2"] = true,
+        ["Val3"] = false,
+    },
+    ["X"] = {
+        ["Val3"] = false,
+        ["ValX"] = true,
+        ["Val1"] = true,
+        ["Val2"] = true,
+    },
+}
+
+io.write("SavedVars = ")
+serialize_sorted(testTable, "")