adding a key value pair in table.insert

Questions
1

Is there any way to add a key value pair to a table? Whenevery I try, it gives me a syntax error. I tried to get around this by setting the value manually after the table was made, using ~~~ myTable[“myKey”] = myValue ~~~ but it never actually saves this value (as far as I can tell.) Is adding a key value pair to a table even possible using table.insert? Should my manual way still work? Thanks in advance,
edat44

2

myTable["myKey"] = myValue works. The error is elsewhere, check your code.

3

A table can serve different purposes.

If you use table.insert then you use is as a list, the contained elements start at index 1, advancing by 1 without a gap. You can iterate over a list with both pairs() and ipairs().

If you say myTable["myKey"] = myValue then you use the table as a hash. You can only properly iterate over a hash table with pairs().

There are similarities between the two so both are handled by the same data structure, but you shall take care and not mix the modes.