LUA code to convert Hex to String based on Table

apparently the 'pairs' operates in an arbitrary order https://www.lua.org/pil/7.3.html

 

Dictionaries work by converting the key into a unique integer value using a hashing algorithm. The hash value then becomes an index into an array. So the dictionary is actually sorted by the hash value, which is what the 'pairs' goes by. Not very useful, but not arbitrary. If you use ipairs, this is implemented as a 'for' loop starting from one, looking up each key in succession. However it will stop on the first miss (i.e. the first gap in integer keys), which is why it would only retrieve the 1 and 2 keys, as key 3 is missing.

In Lua (since V5), if you create a dictionary with consecutive integer keys starting from one, Lua will forgo the dictionary structure and just create a linear array. This is transparent to the end user however.