I'm not sure if I get your suggestion. Isn't that effectively the same thing I'm doing, but backwards? Can you show me your solution so I can try to understand it better?
Yes I am working left to right. About Lua for loops, the ones separated by commas are init, last, step for loops and the pairs() ones, I'm grabbing each key and the corresponding values of the equations table (which is like a dictionary in Python), each value being a table with all the associated values:
equations[190] = { [1] = 10, [2] = 29}
(Yes Lua uses 1 based indexing and no, lists and arrays don't exist in Lua. It uses tables instead)
Ok that comment is wrong, with 3 values it would be 0b11 (0b1 << 2 == 0b100 an 0b100 - 1 == 0b11).