I want to use a key insde an anonymous table from within that same table, like so:
loadstring( [[return {
a = "One",
b = a.." two"
}]] )
From my perspective, this should return the following table:
{ a = "One", b = "One two" }
However, it just returns nil.
Is this possible to do, and how?
As the other answer said, you can't reference a key in a table that is being constructed, but you can use a variable to hold the value you want to reference several times:
local a = "One"
local t = { a = a, b = a.." two" }
No, you can't do that. At the point you are using a the table has not been constructed. Lua looks for a global variable a, which is why you get nil.
If you want to refer to keys in a table they must be defined first.
local t = { a = 'One' }
t.b = t.a..' two'
Related
I am having trouble with my tables, I am making a text adventure in lua
local locxy = {}
locxy[1] = {}
locxy[1][1] = {}
locxy[1][1]["locdesc"] = "dungeon cell"
locxy[1][1]["items"] = {"nothing"}
locxy[1][1]["monsters"] = {monster1}
The [1][1] refers to x,y coordinates and using a move command I can successfully move into different rooms and receive the description of said room.
Items and monsters are nested tables since multiple items can be held there (each with their own properties).
The problem I am having is getting the items/monsters part to work. I have a separate table such as:
local monsters = {}
monsters["rat"] = {}
monsters["rat"]["Name"] = "a rat"
monsters["rat"]["Health"] = 5
monsters["rat"]["Attack"] = 1
I am using a table like this to create outlines for various enemy types. The monster1 is a variable I can insert into the location table to call upon one of these outlines, however I don't know how to reference it.
print("You are in ", locxy[x][y]["locdesc"]) -- this works
print("You can see a ", locxy[x][y]["monsters]["Name"],".") - does not work
So I would like to know how I can get that to work, I may need a different approach which is fine since I am learning. But I would also specifically like to know how to / if it possible to use a variable within a table entry that points to data in a separate table.
Thanks for any help that can be offered!
This line
locxy[x][y]["monsters]["Name"]
says
look in the locxy table for the x field
then look in the y field of that value
look in the "monsters"` field of that value
then look in the "Name" field of that value
The problem is that the table you get back from locxy[x][y]["monsters"] doesn't have a "Name" field. It has some number of entries in numerical indices.
locxy[x][y]["monsters][1]["Name"] will get you the name of the first monster in that table but you will need to loop over the monsters table to get all of them.
Style notes:
Instead of:
tab = {}
tab[1] = {}
tab[1][1] = {}
you can just use:
tab = {
[1] = {
{}
}
}
and instead of:
monsters = {}
monsters["rat"] = {}
monsters["rat"]["Name"] = "foo"
you can just use:
monsters = {
rat = {
Name = "foo"
}
}
Or ["rat"] and ["Name"] if you want to be explicit in your keys.
Similarly instead of monsters["rat"]["Name"] you can use monsters.rat.Name.
Backpack = {Potion = 'backpack',Stack = 'bag',Loot = 'derp', Gold = 'random'}
Backpack[1] ~= 'backpack' -- nope
As you guys can see, I cannot call Backpack[1] since its not a numeral table, how would I generate a table after the construction of Backpack, consisting only of it's values? for example:
Table_to_be_Constructed = {Value of Potion,Value of Stack,Value of Loot,Value of Gold} -- this is what i need
It seems simple but I couldn't find a way to do it.
I need it this way because i will run a numeric loop on Table_to_be_Constructed[i]
To iterate over all the key-value pairs in a table, use the pairs function:
local Table_to_be_Constructed = {}
for key, value in pairs(Backpack) do
table.insert(Table_to_be_Constructed, value)
end
Note: the iteration order is not defined. So, you might want to sort Table_to_be_Constructed afterwards.
By convention, the variable name _ is used to indicate a variable who's value won't be used. So, since you want only the values in the tables, you might write the loop this way instead:
for _, value in pairs(Backpack) do
For the updated question
Backpack has no order (The order in the constructor statement is not preserved.) If you want to add an order to its values when constructing Table_to_be_Constructed, you can do it directly like this:
local Table_to_be_Constructed = {
Backpack.Potion,
Backpack.Stack,
Backpack.Loot,
Backpack.Gold
}
Or indirectly like this:
local items = { 'Potion', 'Stack', 'Loot', 'Gold' }
local Table_to_be_Constructed = {}
for i=1, #items do
Table_to_be_Constructed[i] = Backpack[items[i]]
end
Am I able to make a separated table filled with elements from other tables in Lua? Like this:
TableA = { a=1, b=2, c=3 }
TableB = { John=4, Jane =5 }
TableC = { x = "asd", y = "dsa", z = "sda" }
TableAll = { TableA.a, TableB.John, TableC.x}
It's a general example, but may work. I'm not sure in it.
Is there some reason why that wouldn't work?
All that tablename.key does is access an element of a table. This is a value; the fact that it came from a table is completely irrelevant. The value returned by tablename.key is no different than the value 5, nil, true, "some string", or any other value in Lua.
You can initialize a table with values; it doesn't matter where those values come from.
Just picking upon Lua and trying to figure out how to construct tables.
I have done a search and found information on table.insert but all the examples I have found seem to assume I only want numeric indices while what I want to do is add key pairs.
So, I wonder if this is valid?
my_table = {}
my_table.insert(key = "Table Key", val = "Table Value")
This would be done in a loop and I need to be able to access the contents later in:
for k, v in pairs(my_table) do
...
end
Thanks
There are essentially two ways to create tables and fill them with data.
First is to create and fill the table at once using a table constructor. This is done like follows:
tab = {
keyone = "first value", -- this will be available as tab.keyone or tab["keyone"]
["keytwo"] = "second value", -- this uses the full syntax
}
When you do not know what values you want there beforehand, you can first create the table using {} and then fill it using the [] operator:
tab = {}
tab["somekey"] = "some value" -- these two lines ...
tab.somekey = "some value" -- ... are equivalent
Note that you can use the second (dot) syntax sugar only if the key is a string respecting the "identifier" rules - i.e. starts with a letter or underscore and contains only letters, numbers and underscore.
P.S.: Of course you can combine the two ways: create a table with the table constructor and then fill the rest using the [] operator:
tab = { type = 'list' }
tab.key1 = 'value one'
tab['key2'] = 'value two'
Appears this should be the answer:
my_table = {}
Key = "Table Key"
-- my_table.Key = "Table Value"
my_table[Key] = "Table Value"
Did the job for me.
In Lua, you can create a table the following way :
local t = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 }
However, I want to create an associative table, I have to do it the following way :
local t = {}
t['foo'] = 1
t['bar'] = 2
The following gives an error :
local t = { 'foo' = 1, 'bar' = 2 }
Is there a way to do it similarly to my first code snippet ?
The correct way to write this is either
local t = { foo = 1, bar = 2}
Or, if the keys in your table are not legal identifiers:
local t = { ["one key"] = 1, ["another key"] = 2}
i belive it works a bit better and understandable if you look at it like this
local tablename = {["key"]="value",
["key1"]="value",
...}
finding a result with : tablename.key=value
Tables as dictionaries
Tables can also be used to store information which is not indexed
numerically, or sequentially, as with arrays. These storage types are
sometimes called dictionaries, associative arrays, hashes, or mapping
types. We'll use the term dictionary where an element pair has a key
and a value. The key is used to set and retrieve a value associated
with it. Note that just like arrays we can use the table[key] = value
format to insert elements into the table. A key need not be a number,
it can be a string, or for that matter, nearly any other Lua object
(except for nil or 0/0). Let's construct a table with some key-value
pairs in it:
> t = { apple="green", orange="orange", banana="yellow" }
> for k,v in pairs(t) do print(k,v) end
apple green
orange orange
banana yellow
from : http://lua-users.org/wiki/TablesTutorial
To initialize associative array which has string keys matched by string values, you should use
local petFamilies = {["Bat"]="Cunning",["Bear"]="Tenacity"};
but not
local petFamilies = {["Bat"]=["Cunning"],["Bear"]=["Tenacity"]};