[Phanx]

The order in which key/value pairs are returned by pairs is undefined, so, basically random. next works the same way. The only way to directly walk through a table in a specific order is to use ipairs.

There are some workarounds, but they all involve creating an extra table with only the keys from the original table as indexed values, sorting it somehow, and then using ipairs on the extra table and value lookups on the original table, eg:

local t = {
    ["cow"] = "moo",
    ["pig"] = "oink",
    ["other"] = "?",
}

local order = { "cow", "pig", "other" }

for i, k in ipairs(order) do
    local v = t[k]
    -- do something with v
end

The other option would be to switch your table to an indexed table with subtables:

local t = {
    { "cow", "moo" },
    { "pig", "oink" },
    { "other", "?" },
}

Then you can sort it however you like, and use ipairs on it. However, you can't do direct value lookups anymore.

Without knowing what you're actually doing, it's hard to say what the best method will be.