How to create nested Lua tables using the C API

Question

I want to create a table like

myTable = {
    [0] = { [\"a\"] = 4, [\"b\"] = 2 },
    [1] = { [\"a\"] = 13, [\"b\"] = 37 }
}

using the C AP

Answer 1

Here is something generic I came up to solve a similar problem, based on lhf's answer. This will create a Lua table for the form

{
    {"foo"},
    {"bar", "baz"}
}

With arbitrary table/sub table length.

int list_of_lists_to_lua(lua_State* L, const std::vector>& convertme) {
    lua_newtable(L);
    int counter = 0;
    for (const std::vector& list : convertme) {
        lua_pushnumber(L, ++counter);
        lua_newtable(L);
        int counter2 = 0;
        for (const std::string& item : list) {
            lua_pushnumber(L, ++counter2);
            lua_pushstring(L, item);
            lua_settable(L,-3);
        }
        lua_settable(L,-3);
    }
    return 1;
}