Is there any other loops other than `while true do end repeat until nil for i=1,1 do end`?

Don't be sorry for posting, that's what this website is for!

The only thing you're missing the generic for loop. It looks like this:

for index,value in pairs(table) do

end

The variables index and value can be replaced with anything. table should be a valid table.

The code will loop through once for every value in the given table. Each time it loops, the 'value' variable will be equal to the value it's currently passing over, and 'index' will be equal to the number of times it's already looped. In programming lingo, this is called an iterator.

Edit: Here's an example:

local stuff = { "Apple", "Pear", "Orange" }

for i,v in pairs(stuff) do
    print(i)
    print(v)
end

--[[

Output:

1
Apple
2
Pear
3
Orange

]]

Lua has three kinds of loops. while, repeat, and for.

While loops go like this:

while condition do
    body
end

Basically, when you get to the loop, you look at the condition.

If it's falsey, skip to the end. If its truthy, run body and then start over, checking the condition again.

Repeat loops are a lot like while loops. They look like this:

repeat
    body
until condition

You can rewrite them as while-loops like this:

body
while condition do
    body
end

Basically, they always run their inside once before checking the condition. Usually, it's better to use while-loops, but these are occasionally useful.

For loops are the most special. There's the kind you mentioned:

for i = 1, 5 do
    print( i )
end

This will print 1 2 3 4 5.

But they can do more than just that! You can choose an increment size:

for i = 0, 10, 2 do
    print( i )
end

This prints 0 2 4 6 8 10

For loops also allow the use of iterators. The most famous iterators are pairs and ipairs.

An iterator is a function that when called, produces some output. When you call it again, it produces a different output, and so on. For instance, this generator will produce the numbers 1 to 10:

function oneToTen()
    local i = 0
    return function()
        i = i + 1
        if i > 10 then
            return nil
        end
        return i
    end
end

So if we do:

for i in oneToTen() do
    print( i )
end

Or if we want to print the first 20 squares, we can do this:

function squares()
    local i = 0
    return function()
        i = i + 1
        if i > 20 then
            return nil
        end
        return i^2
    end
end

And now we can do:

for n in squares() do
    print( n )
end

Iterators are extremely powerful, but they can be tricky to write. ipairs and pairs are iterators which iterate over tables, for instance, and they're used all the time.