Infinite loop bug in Lua - lua

I'm new to this platform and I'm still learning to
program in Lua, so, if any newbie errors appear, forgive me.
The following code is from one of the functions in my project that reads the insert
of the user and validates whether or not it is a data of type "Number". If,
the loop will be broken and the function will return the user input, otherwise, the
program will ask the user to enter the data again:
function bin.readnum(text)
local insertion
if text == nil then text = "Text: " end
while (insertion == nil) do
insertion = nil
print(text)
insertion = io.read("number")
if insertion ~= nil then break end
end
return insertion
end
But, if the user enters a wrong data (string) the function prints the text
madly instead of asking the user to re-enter the data.

When io.read fails to parse the data it got into a number, it doesn't discard it, but instead leaves it in the buffer for the next call to it. That means that in your code, instead of letting the user enter something else, it'll just keep trying to parse the same non-number forever. To fix it, in your if insertion ~= nil then block, do io.read() right before break, to read and discard the whole invalid line.

In addition to what Joseph Sible said:
io.read("number") is wrong: 5.1 docs demand "*n" and 5.4 docs demand just "n" for reading numbers. It probably works nevertheless due to Lua just searching for the chars in the string.
I recommend just replacing insertion = io.read("number") withinsertion = tonumber(assert(io.read(), "EOF")) - this will read a line and try to parse it as a number; the assert gracefully deals with nil being returned by io.read for EOF.
You don't need to set insertion to nil, the later assignment will do that already if what was read is not a valid number.
Style: Consider replacing your explicit nil checks with truthiness checks and removing the parentheses around the while-condition. You don't need a break, you can immediately return the read number; finally, you can even replace the entire loop with tail recursion.
All in all I'd rewrite it as follows:
function bin.readnum(text)
print(text or "Text: ")
local num = tonumber(assert(io.read(), "EOF"))
if num then return num end
return bin.readnum(text)
end
or alternatively using a repeat-until loop:
function bin.readnum(text)
local num
repeat
print(text or "Text: ")
num = tonumber(assert(io.read(), "EOF"))
until num
return num
end

Related

I am looking for a Lua find and replace logic

enter image description here
I just started working on lua scripting since a week. I have a lua file where in the logic needs to be written for a certain condition.
The condition when gets triggered
it does an iteration on one of the fields to change value from
(ABC123-XYZ) to this value
(ABC123#1-XYZ) and it keeps increasing whenever iterations happens (ABC123#2-XYZ)
I need to run a function that removes the # followed by number to change it back to (ABC123-XYZ). Looking for any advice!
Edit 1:
Below is the updated code that is written Thanks to #Piglet
I have another scenario if therr are two hashes in the variable.
local x = 'BUS144611111-PNB_00#80901#1555-122TRNHUBUS'
local b = x:gsub("#%d+","")
function remove_char(a) a=a:gsub("#%d+","")
return a;
end if string.match(x,"#")
then print('function')
print(remove_char(x));
else print(x);
end
Expected output should be
x = 'BUS144611111-PNB_00#80901-122TRNHUBUS' for the aforesaid variable
local a = "ABC123#1-XYZ"
local b = a:gsub("#%d+", "")
this will remove any # followed by or one more digits from your string.

Multiple Messages & Issues Searching Lua Tables

I am attempting to make a Lua script for an online community I am a part of, I am having a problem when I attempt to search through a table array I believe. It doesn't detect the results I want.
The way it is supposed to work is that when someone types /gps [streetname] it will search the table at the top, detect the matching streetname & the coordinates and then set a waypoint to that relevant position.
At the moment it works when there is just one entry in the table, but when I put more, it will provide the error message for any non-matching streets & then the waypoint set message for the matching streets. I've Googled and don't appear to be able to find anything to help.
Any help would be appreciated.
waypoint = {
{404.08, -920.23, 'sinnerstreet', 'Sinner Street'},
{360.85, -956.46, 'atleestreet', 'Atlee Street'},
{500.48, -956.80, 'littlebighornavenue', 'Little Bighorn Avenue'},
}
RegisterCommand('gps', function(source, args, rawCommand)
for k,v in pairs(waypoint) do
x, y, streetname, displayname = table.unpack(v)
results = ""
if args[1] == nil then
if IsWaypointActive() then
SetWaypointOff()
TriggerEvent('chatMessage', '^1^*GPS Navigation: ^r^7Your GPS system has been reset.')
return end
elseif args[2] == nil and args[3] == nil then
results = args[1]
elseif args[2] ~= nil and args[3] == nil then
results = args[1] .. args[2]
else
results = args[1] .. args[2] .. args[3]
end
results = string.lower(results) -- This convertes the args into lower case
end
-- This locates the streetname and sets a waypoint to it for the player
if string.find(streetname, results) then
SetNewWaypoint(x, y)
TriggerEvent('chatMessage', '^1^*GPS Navigation: ^r^7Your waypoint to ^1' .. displayname .. '^r^7 has been set.')
else
TriggerEvent('chatMessage', '^1^*GPS Navigation: ^r^7There has been an error with your street name, please try again.')
end
end)
TriggerEvent('chat:addSuggestion', '/gps', 'This creates a waypoint to your designated street. ^*USE: /gps [streetname]')
To be honest, your code makes little to no sense, and it's probably because you're not using all the nice stuff Lua has to offer.
{404.08, -920.23, 'sinnerstreet', 'Sinner Street'},
You're storing redundant data there. The third value is really just the fourth one with spaces removed and all lowercase.
'sinnerstreet' == ('Sinner Street'):gsub("[^%l]", ""):lower()
In english: take "Sinner Street", globally (meaning in the entire string) substitute everything that is not a lowercase (%l) letter with nothing (""), then make the result of that lowercase. What you get is "sinnerstreet".
x, y, streetname, displayname = table.unpack(v)
Using globals there, that's not good. Globals are the devil. Don't use them.
Then, a few lines further down:
SetNewWaypoint(x, y)
Think about it for a moment. You set x and y in each iteration of your for loop. After the loop is done, they always contain the coordinates of the last waypoint you iterated over. I doubt that's what you want. Use local; it forces you to think what you want the scope of your variables to be, which will help you spot this kind of problem.
elseif args[2] ~= nil and args[3] == nil then
results = args[1] .. args[2]
Unless you specifically want to limit it to 3 arguments, which I doubt, you can also use table.concat to concatenate all the values in a sequence (read: array)
results = string.lower( table.concat(args) )
The thing that puzzles me is why you do this in a loop. For every waypoint, you set result to the same value, which is all the arguments concatenated and converted to lower case.
now what though? You check if result (what the user searched for) contains streetname, which, as we have previously found out, contains the name of the last waypoint in the list.
Using tables for searching
Lua has tables, one of if not the most powerful general-purpose data structure in programming.
local map = {}
for _,waypoint in ipairs(waypoints) do
map[waypoint[3]:lower()] = waypoint
end
This will get you something that looks about like this:
local map = {
sinnerstreet = {404.08, -920.23, 'sinnerstreet', 'Sinner Street'},
atleestreet = {360.85, -956.46, 'atleestreet', 'Atlee Street'},
littlebighornavenue ={500.48, -956.80, 'littlebighornavenue', 'Little Bighorn Avenue'},
}
and if you want to know if a street exists, you can just do this:
if map['atleestreet'] then
print(map.atleestreet[4])
end
if treats everything that isn't false or nil as truthy, so you can just write `map['atleestreet'] in the condition
my_table['text'] can be written as my_table.text
Looking up string indices in a table is pretty fast because of how it's implemented.
Conclusion
Try thinking your code through. If necessary, go through it line by line, writing down what values the variables hold in each moment. If you've been at it for a while, get some rest first or do something else for a while.
Then set your variables to local wherever possible (read: everywhere), figure out what needs to be inside and outside the loop and try again.
Remarks
Instead of if something == nil you can just write if not something, and if something ~= nil just if something
Apologies
Sorry for the long wall of text and using spaces inside brackets, but I wanted things to be specially easy to understand.

[lua]: Key with value 1 doesnt do the same as regular 1

Ive been coding for a mod Im making for a game but I ran into an issue with tables not returning values when the key is entered:
for k, v in pairs(self.math) do
print(self.exce[1])
print(self.exce[k])
print(k)
if self.exce[k] ~= nil then
self.math[k] = nil
end
end
This is the specific part of the script that is breaking. When I run these in the game it returns:
[lua]: true
[lua]: nil
[lua]: 1
Which means is basically saying that 1 is not equal to 1.
The function I used to store my data is
function filterExceptions.server_onException( self, id )
if self.exce[id] == nil then
self.exce[id] = true
self.network:sendToClients( "client_onList", id )
else
self.exce[id] = true
self.network:sendToClients( "client_offList", id )
end
end
In this code the self is a table made by the game you can acces and get game data from or store it in and the id comes from a function I made to get the players id. This id in this case is a 1 (I printed it multiple times).I know that every part of this code is working except for the code in the first block, and escpecialy the part where it tries to do self.exce[k]. Ive tried a lot like going trough every variable in self.exce to see if it was in there and then do stuff, but it still wouldn't work. Its very annoying how lua thinks that k ~= 1 while it definitely is, ive even used similar code in a part that is working.
So what is wrong about this code that its not printing the self.exce[k] while self.exce[1] does work? Dont worry about the creation of the table and stuff, cuz that is already happening whenever it is needed, else it would have given errors about that too.
Putting together a couple different comments and your code here, it looks like the index value of the array in some particular iteration of the "for in pairs" loop (or perhaps all of them, but I'll touch on that in a minute) is a string instead of an integer.
To summarize if you don't want to read the entire thing, "for k, v in pairs" loops will iterate through an entire array, setting k to the index of the value v. It appears your "for in pairs" loop is attempting to iterate through a value of nil where k is a string instead of an integer. You may also want to look into using ipairs instead of pairs in your for loop.
The value of someArray[1]is different than the value of someArray["1"].
The index [1] is a completely different index than the index ["1"] for any given array.
A simple fix would be to use
ind = tonumber(k)
print(self.exce[ind])
This converts the string k to a number type. Be aware this may throw an error if k is a non-numerical string. If the array has any values where the index is a non-numerical string, you may get an error. As the other answer suggests, converting the index k to a string instead of an integer would work as well, and would not throw errors if you used a non-numerical value for your indices.
My guess as to why this is happening would be that the function that you're using to store your data to an array, filterExceptions.server_onException( self, id ), is being passed a string instead of an integer, which would result in the k value being set to a string in that particular iteration of the "for in pairs" loop.
To help better understand this, here's a bit of example code:
a = {true, false, false}
a[1] = true
a["1"] = true
print("Raw for in pairs loop")
for k, v in pairs (a) do
print(type(k)..k)
end
print("For in pairs converting k to a number")
for k, v in pairs (a) do
ind = tonumber(k)
print(type(ind)..ind)
end
print("For in ipairs")
--which I'm not sure I completely understand but
--it seems to skip over any iteration where k is not a number
for k, v in ipairs(a) do
print(type(k)..k)
end
This code produces the following output:
Raw for in pairs loop
number1
number2
number3
string1
For in pairs converting k to a number
number1
number2
number3
number1
For in ipairs
number1
number2
number3
EDIT: Not sure what's going on in the self.math table so I can't comment on that.
EDIT2: I'd also refer you to the following link: lua: iterate through all pairs in table
The top answer there should help understand the difference between pairs and ipairs, if you don't already. You may want to use ipairs to prevent values of k where v == nil from being iterated through with pairs. pairs will iterate through every key/value pair, whereas ipairs will iterate through integer keys starting at 1 and going until it hits a nil value.
EDIT3: I'm sorry this is such a long answer...I just wanted to be thorough.
It apears converting the id to a string fixes this, tough im still confused as to why this same code worked on another block and not this one.
function filterExceptions.server_onException( self, id )
local id2 = tostring(id)
if self.exce[id2] == nil then
self.exce[id2] = true
self.network:sendToClients( "client_onList", id )
else
self.exce[id2] = true
self.network:sendToClients( "client_offList", id )
end
end

Test variable for Numeric in one line

I found this code on another thread.
def is_number? string
true if Float(string) rescue false
end
Instead of using a method to return true or false, I'd like to do this "is_numeric" test in one line, in an if statement. Can someone explain if this is possible? I'm getting errors at the moment both when the string variable is null and when it contains non-numeric characters.
if Float(string)
* do something
else
* do something else
end
if Float() is pointless code, since Float() will either return a truthy value or raise an error (based on my limited look at the source code - as of writing, you can follow the code path from line #2942). I'd suggest you're asking the wrong question/looking at the problem wrong (it'd be helpful to know what you're actually trying to achieve).
To do something with Float() on one line and avoid breaking code, use rescue as a statement modifier, as has been done in the is_number? method posted.
Float(string) rescue 0.0 # trying to emulate String#to_f!
Ensuring the phone number is 10 digits, numbers only, is quite simple.
PHONE_NUM_LENGTH = 10
string.length == PHONE_NUM_LENGTH && string.count('0-9') == PHONE_NUM_LENGTH
will return the true/false value representing this check. This is more efficient than a Regex.
The first part,
string.length == PHONE_NUM_LENGTH
checks whether the string is 10 characters long. The second,
string.count('0-9') == PHONE_NUM_LENGTH
checks whether it has exactly 10 numeric characters.

Lua: When and how to write tables to _G

I am learning Lua from a book, and I am NOT a programmer. I am trying to save a table of data to a file using the following functions (that were copied directly from the book), but the function is getting an error when trying to get a string from _G[resTable]. Why?
function readFromFile(filename,resTable)
local hfile = io.open(filename)
if hfile == nil then return end
local results = {} -why is this table here?
local a = 1
for line in hfile:lines() do-- debug shows this loop doesn't run (no lines in hfile?)
_G[resTable[a]] = line
a = a + 1
end
end
function writeToFile(filename, resTable)
local hfile = io.open(filename, "w")
if hfile == nil then return end
local i
for i=1, #resTable do
hfile:write(_G[resTable[i]])--bad argument #1 to 'write' (string expected, got nil)
end
end
'writeToFile" gets an error when trying to :write to _G[resTable[i]]. In the two previous functions listed here, I don't understand why they are referencing _G[resTable[i]] since I don't see any code that is writing to _G.
So here is the order of execution:
local aryTable = {
"Score",
"Lives",
"Health",
}
readFromFile("datafile", aryTable)
writeToFile("datafile", aryTable)
and I get an error:
bad argument #1 to 'write' (string expected, got nil)
stack traceback:
[C]: in function 'write'
test.lua:45: in function 'writeToFile'
test.lua:82: in main chunk
Apparently the author has implemented a way of saving a list of global variables to file and restore them.
The function writeToFile expects a filename and a list of global variables names (resTable). Then it opens a the filename for writing and iterates over the provided names:
for i=1, #resTable do
hfile:write(_G[resTable[i]])
end
in this loop resTable[i] is the i-th name and _G[resTable[i]] is the corresponding value, taken from the table _G, which stores all the globals. If a global with that name is not defined, _G[resTable[i]] will return nil, which is the cause of the failure you experienced. Thus you must provide a resTable that is filled with names of existing globals to avoid this error.
Apart from this, the serialization strategy of the author is really naive, since it handles only variables with string values. In fact by saving the variables to file like that the type information is lost, thus a variable having the value "100" (a string) and another with value 100 (a number) will be stored the same on disk.
The problem is evident analyzing the readFromFile function. After opening the file for reading, it scans it line by line, creating a new variable for each name mentioned in its resTable list:
local a = 1
for line in hfile:lines() do
_G[resTable[a]] = line
a = a + 1
end
the problem is manyfold:
the loop variable line will always have a string value, thus the recreated globals will be all strings, even if they were numbers originally;
it assumes that the variables are recreated in the same order, thus you must provide the same names in resTable you used when you saved the file;
it assumes that the values are stored one per line, but this is a false assumption, since the writeToFile function doesn't write a newline character after each value;
Moreover that local results = {} is useless and in both functions the file handle hfile is not closed. This latter is very bad practice: it could waste system resources and if your script fails part of the supposedly written data could never make its way to disk, since it may be still stuck in some buffer. File handles are automatically closed when the script ends, but only if it ends in a sane way.
Unless you did some error in pasting the code or omitted significant parts of it or the book is building some example incrementally, I dare say it is fairly crappy.
If you want a quick and dirty way to save and retrieve some globals you could use this:
function writeToFile( filename, resTable )
local hfile = io.open(filename, "w")
if hfile == nil then return end
for _, name in ipairs( resTable ) do
local value = _G[name]
if value ~= nil then
hfile:write( name, " = ")
local vtype = type( value )
if vtype == 'string' then
hfile:write( string.format( "%q", value ) )
elseif vtype == 'number' or vtype == 'boolean' then
hfile:write( tostring( value ) )
else
-- do nothing - unsupported type
end
hfile:write( "\n" )
end
end
hfile:close()
end
readFromFile = dofile
It saves the globals as a Lua script and reads them back by executing the script using Lua dofile function. Its main limitation is that it can only save strings, booleans an numbers, but usually this is enough while learning.
You can test it with the following statements:
a = 10
b = "20"
c = "hello"
d = true
print( a, b, c, d )
writeToFile( "datafile", { "a", "b", "c", "d" } )
a, b, c, d = nil
print( a, b, c, d )
readFromFile( "datafile" )
print( a, b, c, d )
If you need more advanced serialization techniques you can refer to Lua WIKI page on table serialization.
Those aren't generalized "read/write any table from/to any file" functions. They apparently expect the name of a global table as an argument, not a [reference to a local] table itself. They look like the kind of one-off solution to a very specific problem that tends to show up in books. :-)
Your functions shouldn't be doing anything with _G. I don't have an API reference handy, but the read loop should be doing something like
resTable[a] = line
and the write loop would be doing
hfile:write(resTable[i])
Throw out that local "results" table too. :-)
This code reads and writes data from a file into global variables whose names are specified in aryTable. Since your file is empty, readFromFile does not actually set the variable values. And then writeToFile fails when trying to get the variable values, because they haven't been set.
Try putting data in the file so that the variables do get set, or set the variable values yourself before writing them to the file (e.g. Score = 10, etc.)

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