Everything that's not local is global. Simple as that. Scope has nothing to do with the type of values you can store in variables.
Lua Code:
g_str = "hello world" -- string stored in global var
g_num = 5 -- number
g_tab = { foo = 5, bar = 7} -- table
Tables are a hybrid between what other languages call dictionary/mapping/hashtable and list/array/vector. Lua likes to look smart, so you can have a table indexed by any type of value, or even a mix of types (strings, numbers, even functions). If you happen to use a contiguous sequence of numbers 1..N as indices, it happens to be an indexed array. I suggest you read a lot, and carefully, about tables, they might be a bit tough to grasp at first, but in the end the hybrid nature makes them super easy to use
