Lua string inside variable reference

Question

Is there any way to "concatenate" variable references with strings?:

fat_greek_wedding = 0;
nationality = "greek";

"fat_" .. nationality .. "_wedding" = 1; -- fat_greek_wedding == 1

Or perhaps something like:

fat_greek_wedding = 0;
nationality = "greek";

fat_(nationality)_wedding = 1; -- fat_greek_wedding == 1

FYI I am writing code for Unified Remote, which uses Lua: https://github.com/unifiedremote/Docs

Answer 1

Global variables, or fields of structures - are just elements of some table, and variable's name is a text key in that table.

If that fat_greek_wedding is a global variable, you can access it like this:

fat_greek_wedding = 0;
nationality = "greek";

_G["fat_" .. nationality .. "_wedding"] = 1;

Here you explicitly access global environment, altering/creating element by the name that was constructed in run time. Effectively it is the same as running fat_greek_wedding=1