Lua - merge tables?

Question

I need to merge two tables, with the contents of the second overwriting contents in the first if a given item is in both. I looked but the standard libraries don\'t seem to

Answer 1

Here's iterative version for deep merge because I don't like potential stack overflows of recursive.

local merge_task = {}
function merge_to_left_o(orig, new)
   merge_task[orig] = new

   local left = orig
   while left ~= nil do
      local right = merge_task[left]
      for new_key, new_val in pairs(right) do
         local old_val = left[new_key]
         if old_val == nil then
            left[new_key] = new_val
         else
            local old_type = type(old_val)
            local new_type = type(new_val)
            if (old_type == "table" and new_type == "table") then
               merge_task[old_val] = new_val
            else
               left[new_key] = new_val
            end
         end
      end
      merge_task[left] = nil
      left = next(merge_task)
   end
end