How to return table key/value pairs in a particular order?

[Paul Merrell <marbux@...>]

Hi, All,

I have a prototype table for substituting character strings with UTF8
characters:

  local tSub = {
["%-%-%-"] = "—",
["%-%-"] = "–",
["%.%.%."] = " … "}

My problem is that the first key/value pair must be processed before
the second key/value pair because of overlapping characters in the
keys, but the order in which Lua returns table key/value pairs is
unpredictable, leading to buggy results in the substitutions.

Eventually the script would make many other substitutions, but I seem
to be stuck here at the prototype stage because of the unpredictable
return order.

How might I work around this?

Best regards,

Paul

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