Tables: Trying to return a key, not a value?

This should choose a random one from a list of 8 keys (Colors) and their values (BrickColor) but only return the key name (Which should be a string of the color chosen).

Currently the only problem is that this returns "nil" and probably not the right way to do it since I've just begun working with tables/dictionaries.

local color = {}

local colorDictionary = {
	["Red"] = BrickColor.new("Bright red"); --[[Should choose 1 out of the 8 but also return the key, (Return "Red" and not "BrickColor.new("Bright red")]]
	["Orange"] = BrickColor.new("Bright orange");
	["Yellow"] = BrickColor.new("Bright yelow");
	["Green"] = BrickColor.new("Bright green");
	["Blue"] = BrickColor.new("Bright blue");
	["Pink"] = BrickColor.new("Pink");
	["Brown"] = BrickColor.new("Brown");
	["White"] = BrickColor.new("Lily white")
};

function color.randomColor()
	local randomColor = colorDictionary[math.random(0, #colorDictionary)] --weird error if 0 was a 1
	print(randomColor) --prints nil so obviously not correct
end


return color

I read up on wiki that this code would probably print the value instead of the key. So because it's like that I wanted to see if printing the value worked. Any way I can change this for the key?

Because you're using a Dictionary and not an Array, the colorDictionary[math.random(0, #colorDictionary)] always returns colorDictionary[0], which is nil.

This also explains your incorrect bounds error, because math.random(1, 0) errors, and #colorDictionary resolves to 0.

There are several ways to fix this, but the easiest is to restructure your Table:

local color = {}

local colorDictionary = {
    {"Red", BrickColor.new("Bright red")};
    {"Orange", BrickColor.new("Bright orange")};
    {"Yellow", BrickColor.new("Bright yelow")};
    {"Green", BrickColor.new("Bright green")};
    {"Blue", BrickColor.new("Bright blue")};
    {"Pink", BrickColor.new("Pink")};
    {"Brown", BrickColor.new("Brown")};
    {"White", BrickColor.new("Lily white")}
};

function color.randomColor()
    local randomColor = colorDictionary[math.random(0, #colorDictionary)]
    print(randomColor[1])
end


return color

You could even make the sub-tables dictionaries rather than arrays to give the attributes explicit names, like ColorName or BrickColor, but I'll leave that to you.