Unpack table into same-named variables

Question

If I have a table with known properties, but where the order of the properties is potentially unknown:

local person = {
    name = 'James',
    age = 30,
}

can I reliably destructure it:

local name, age = unpack(person)

My worry is that if the order of the fields in the table is changed, that destructuring assignment will no longer work as expected.

Answer 1

No, there's no way to associate table fields (which are just string keys in a hash table) with local variables of the same name. You just have to be explicit and think of variables and table keys as two separate things.