Comma separator in the print command appends varying spaces to separated output.

Bugs
1

Why does the “,” separator in the print command vary the number of spaces between these two lines in the output console?

x = {“one”, “two”, “three”, label = “console”}

y = {“fee”, “fi”, “foo”, “fum”}

x.y = y – i.e. x[“y”] = y – the table y

print(‘x.y[2] =’, x.y[2]) – fi (a couple of spaces) ???
print(‘x[“y”][2] =’, x[“y”][2]) – fi (no spaces) ???

2

You can use append .. instead if you want to precisely control output formatting

3

@chrisgeeting The print statement prints values separated by a comma on tab boundaries. The tab boundaries are position 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, etc.

4

Alright Dave, got it…tab boundary. Thanks!
And yes, I noticed the concatenation operator gave me more control. Thanks Jimbo!

5

However be aware if the item your concatenating is not a number or a string (ie, is a boolean, a table or nil) then Lua will throw an error but using a , is always safe

6

@TechDojo You can always call toString(x) on it to make sure you don’t get an error.