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updated readme
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kikito committed Apr 24, 2011
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Expand Up @@ -6,9 +6,100 @@ The objective here is human understanding (i.e. for debugging), not serializatio

h1. Examples of use

"Array-like" tables are rendered horizontally:

<pre>inspect({1,2,3,4}) == "{ 1, 2, 3, 4 }"</pre>

"dictionary-like" tables are rendered with one element per line:

<pre>inspect({a=1,b=2}) == [[{
a = 1,
b = 2
}]]</pre>

The keys will be sorted alphanumerically when possible.

"Hybrid" tables will have the array part on the first line, and the dictionary part just below them:

<pre>
inspect({1,2,3,a=1,b=2}) == [[{ 1, 2, 3,
a = 1,
b = 2
}]]
</pre>

Tables can be nested, and will be indented with two spaces per level.

<pre>
inspect({a={b=2}}) = [
a = {
b = 2
}
}]]
</pre>

By default, @inspect@ will stop rendering at a depth of 4 levels. When that point is reached, it will just return @{...}@ :

<pre>
local t5 = {a = {b = {c = {d = {e = 5}}}}}
inspect(t5) == [[
a = {
b = {
c = {
d = {...}
}
}
}
}]]
</pre>

You can increase/decrease the max depth with the second parameter:

<pre>
inspect(t5, 2) == [[{
a = {
b = {...}
}
}]])

inspect(t5, 7) == [[{
a = {
b = {
c = {
d = {
e = 5
}
}
}
}
}]])
</pre>

Functions, userdata and threads are simply rendered as @<function>@, @<userdata>@ and @<thread>@ respectively:

<pre>
inspect({ f = print, ud = some_user_data, thread = a_thread} ) == [[{
f = <function>,
u = <userdata>,
thread = <thread>
}]])
</pre>


If the table has a metatable, inspect will include it at the end, in a special field called @<metatable>@:

<pre>
inspect(setmetatable({a=1}, {b=2}) == [[{
a = 1
<metatable> = {
b = 2
}
}]])
</pre>

h1. Gotchas / Warnings

This method is *not* appropiate for saving/restoring tables. It is ment to be used by the programmer mainly while debugging a program.

h1. Installation

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