[mekasha]

That is quite helpful. I understand how the table.sort is working, and how you populate the initial table, but I'm having a lot of trouble adding subsequent items to the table.

I'm especially having trouble getting it to work since I'll have 4 values per line in the table, and almost every example I've come across just shows how to handle a key and single value.

I'm assuming that using my initial code, I'll be changing each Print to some method of inserting a new row into my table, then doing the sort at the end, then printing the sorted table.

edit: I think I have it working, here is my concept code:

local coords = {}
 
table.insert (coords , {34132, 70.5, 63.5, "scout"})
table.insert (coords , {34931, 21.7, 50.8, "warrior"})
table.insert (coords , {34133, 26.9, 31.9, "hunter"})
table.insert (coords , {34134, 1000, 1000, "unknown location"})
 
 local playerX = 2
 local playerY = 1
 
    table.sort(coords, function(a, b)
      return ((a[2] - playerX)^2 + (a[3] - playerY)^2) > ((b[2] - playerX)^2 + (b[3] - playerY)^2)
    end)
 
    for i,line in ipairs(coords) do
      print(line[1], line[2], line[3], "npc", line[4], "near place")
    end

Is the "for ipairs" the best way for printing out my sorted table? Also, for the items I do not have the coordinates for, is there a more elegant method than setting their coordinates to 1000, 1000?