Indexed vs associative data structures?

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A recent post by krg pointed out that the difference between Euphoria's sequences and Lua's tables lies in the fact that the former are indexed, whereas the latter are associative.

I have a vague idea of the term associative (as in "associative arrays", which I know), but I am not quite sure I get its full meaning and implications. As for the the term "indexed", I guess it simply refers to the indexing of arrays and of Euphoria's sequences.

Could someone please elaborate on the respective pros and cons of associative vs indexed data structures? In what cases are indexed structures (as used in Euphoria) better than associative structures, and viceversa?

Also, was there not a plan to introduce something like associative arrays in Euphoria too, so that we could have var1=var2."xyz" ?

Thanks

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