Lua - Count the no. of references to a table

Question

The Lua docs say

When a program has no references to a table left, Lua memory management will eventually delete the table and reuse its memory.

My question is : Is it possible to count the no of references to a particular table during runtime?

Answer 1

You can find all references to a Lua value using the debug library. See these messages:

• http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2012-03/msg00479.html
• http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2012-04/msg00758.html

The luatraverse library found in the below link solves this nicely! http://code.matthewwild.co.uk/luatraverse/summary