after loading a module in Lua, I'd like to determine what module file this corresponds to. In python, you do this with code like:
import module_name
module_name.__file__
So in Lua if I do something like
require 'math'
what do I put next to determine where this module is located? Btw, I don't actually need the location of math, but instead have some other third-party packages that were downloaded and want to know what copy of the build files are actually being used when I invoke Lua.
The package library might give you what you need.
For instance, if I have util.lua in my Lua path such that I can write:
require 'util'
I can get the path to the file like this:
print(package.searchpath('util', package.path))
Related
I'm trying to repackage into a Docker container some Lua library that is made of the main module and some helper modules. The helper modules are kept inside a subfolder of the library so that imports from the main file are done as
require 'helpers/SomeHelper'
The problem is: because of the way I want the Docker container to work, it would be extremely helpful if I can invoke this library from a different working folder. That is, my call to the main program would be something like
th /app/main.lua
regardless of the actual working directory I'm standing. Unfortunately, relative imports seem to fail when the working directory is different from the directory where the main file is located.
Is there any way I can configure LUA_PATH or any other mechanism to make these imports work correctly? Note that changing the code of the library itself would be a poor solution, as it wasn't developed by me and I would like to be able to update it to newer versions easily.
If you don't care about the working directory, you can just load lfs / LuaFileSytem and use lfs.chdir( src_dir ) to change to the source directory (potentially saving the current working directory with lfs.currentdir( ) first.)
You can also extend the search path of Lua so that it will search those extra directories. The search is driven by package.searchpath. To add a directory /foo/bar/ to the search in a way that supports all normally supported library layouts, add
/foo/bar/?.lua;/foo/bar/?/init.lua to package.path
/foo/bar/?.so (or .dylib or .dll on other OSen) to package.cpath
You can use several ways to extend the path.
One option that works well is to set the LUA_PATH / LUA_CPATH environment variables. (A ;; sequence in one of them will expand to the full default path.) This can be done from .profile or other setup scripts via an earlier export LUA_PATH="..." or (if started from a wrapper script) inline by setting variables just for that call LUA_PATH="..." lua /foo/bar.lua. (Note that if you export this variable in too broad a scope, other Lua scripts will also get their path extended and may find potentially incompatible Lua libraries.)
(You can also manually modify package.(c)path from LUA_INIT. That way, you won't be able to independently disable LUA_INIT or LUA_PATH, but you can use all of Lua to generate the path dynamically.)
A third option (this may be best in your specific case) is to put the extension of package.path at the top of your main script, as in
do
local dir = (arg[0]:match "^(.*)/$")
if dir then -- else cwd is . which works by default
package.path = dir.."/?.lua;"..dir.."/?/init.lua;"..package.path
package.cpath = dir.."/?.so;"..package.cpath
end
end
-- rest of your program goes here
When running a script with the Lua interpreter, arg[0] is the script. So this extends the path to include the program's directory no matter where it is located, and it will only affect the search path of this particular script / program.
You should not forget about that not all modules are loaded from FS directly.
E.g. to improve perfomance it is possible read/compile file to memory and then
use preload table to provide way to load module from memory.
Basic example
--- preload code. It can be done by host application.
local FooUtils = function()
return {
print = function(...)
print("foo", ...)
end
}
end
local Foo = function()
local Utils = require "foo.utils"
return {
foo = function()
Utils.print"hello"
end
}
end
package.preload['foo.utils'] = FooUtils
package.preload['foo'] = Foo
--- main application
require "foo".foo()
In this example assume that FooUtils and Foo just example of compiled modules.
E.g. it can be like FooUtils = loadstring('path/to/utils.lua) and it can be done
even in separate Lua state and then used in any other.
It is important to remember that Foo module have no idea about how host application does lookup of foo.utils.
So there no standart way to provide original file path or relevant paths.
So if you write some module wich relays on relative paths then this module
may be not working in some environments.
So I just suggest use full namespace like require 'foo.utils' instead of require 'utils'
So in lua, i want to import a module.
I want to have my "polygon" lib in a subfolder, so i reference it like this
local polygon = require('polygon.polygon')
however, it needs another module called 'delaunay', it cannot find it as it checks the main folder
Is there anyway short of editing my library, to get this to work? (some kind of ability to add search paths?)
Thanks
To know where to look for modules, Lua's require uses the variables package.path (.lua) and package.cpath (.so/.dll). You can change them in your program to look in the directory you have it in. For consistency's sake, you can look at their contents to know which OS-specific separator to use. For example:
local sep = package.path:find("\\") and "\\" or "/"
package.path = package.path .. ";." .. sep .. "polygon" .. sep .. "?.lua"
This would include ./polygon/?.lua into the search path, and a call to require "delaunay" would therefore have the require function look for ./polygon/delaunay.lua in addition to existing paths. Bear in mind that in require strings, . denotes a separator as far as file searching is concerned, so calling require "polygon.delaunay" in this scenario will mean searching for ./polygon/polygon/delaunay.lua.
From what I understand of your question, changing the package.path variable to include the path to where your delaunay library is stored would solve your issue, although to give a specific solution more information about your project and directory structure is required.
All what loaded into package.loaded can be load with require() because require() looks first in package.loaded...
-- Lua 5.3 ( lua -i )
> package.loaded.code=load(code.dump)()
> test=require('code')
> test
function: 0x565cb820
So you can use load() or loadfile('/path/to/your_code.lua') to do this. Another nice feature of this method is to load dumped code...
> package.loaded.shell=loadfile('shell.bin')
> shell=require('shell')
> shell('cat shell.bin')
uaS�
�
xV(w#F#�d�#��F�#G���d#��F�#G���d#&�typestringoexecute
/bin/bash>
In any way, it appears that you will have to deal with the subfolders explicitly.
As in, either the module polygon will have to import delaunay as polygon.delaunay.
Or module names will have to be appended to package.path so that lua could search through subfolders for filenames:
package.path=package.path..";./polygon/?.lua"
More info is here.
It is pointed out in comments, you'd probably want to ensure that path concatenation happens only once.
Also, one should be wary of name shadowing.
Finally, while we are at stirring up the past, a pretty nifty trick to solve the issue was proposed here five years before the question.
I would like to separate init.lua script used in Hammerspoon to enhance the readability and maintainance.
So it looks like the following:
init.lua
AppWatcher.lua
WiFiWatcher.lua
KeyRemap.lua
And then from within init.lua I would read these files and make the watcher activate.
However, it seems that there is no such function defined (maybe I may be missing it, though). Is it possible to separate the logic like that in Hammerspoon?
Yes, you can do this using require.
If you put your Lua files in ~/.hammerspoon/, you can then load them using require('modulename'). For example, if you have the following modules:
~/.hammerspoon/AppWatcher.lua
~/.hammerspoon/WiFiWatcher.lua
~/.hammerspoon/KeyRemap.lua
Then you can load them from ~/.hammerspoon/init.lua like this:
local AppWatcher = require('AppWatcher')
local WiFiWatcher = require('WiFiWatcher')
local KeyRemap = require('KeyRemap')
You can load any Lua modules, as long as they appear in package.path. To see the directories you can use, take a look at HammerSpoon's package.path setup file. This references the default Lua package.path, which is defined in luaconf.h.
If you want to put your Lua modules in a directory not included in package.path, you can do it by adding them to the LUA_PATH_5_3 or LUA_PATH environment variables.
I want to let perl use the DBI module in my own path(suppose, /home/users/zdd/perl5/lib/DBI), but the sysem also has a DBI module which is /usr/lib/perl5/lib/DBI.
when I write the following code in my script, perl use the system path be default, how to force it use the one under my path?
use lib './perl5/lib/DBI';
use DBI;
sub test {
....
}
/usr/lib/perl5/lib/DBI was added to the PATH environment variable in my bash profile, it was used by many scripts, so I can't disable it.
The file for the main DBI module is in ./perl5/lib. So your path is not pointing to it.
The DBI folder contains sub-modules of DBI, e.g. DBI::Foo (the :: in module names is a representation of your module directory structure).
Try using ./perl5/lib as your library instead.
Also, using a relative path will fail if the current directory is not what you think it is. If you are in doubt, have your script call cwd to see what the current directory is.
For debugging purposes, it may be helpful to use:
no lib '[main Perl module library path here]';
That way you can be sure you are only using your custom module path. Any failure to find a module will cause an error, rather than silently using the system version.
Update: For more information, see Perldoc on use lib. Perl will use the library that you have specified first. If it does not, that indicates it is not actually finding the module in the location you have given.
In addition to what dan1111 suggested, I would also recommend you print out #INC (just before your use DBI statement) and dump %INC (just after your use DBI statement) to see what your script is doing. That may help you debug the issue.
I was wondering if there's a way to do a lua file only once and have any subsequent attempts to do that lua file will result in a no-op.
I've already thought about doing something akin to C++ header's #if/else/endif trick. I'm wondering if there's a standard way to implement this.
James
well, require pretty much does that.
require "file" -- runs "file.lua"
require "file" -- does not run the "file" again
The only problem with require is that it works on module names, not file names. In particular, require does not handle names with paths (although it does use package.path and package.cpath to locate modules in the file system).
If you want to handle names with paths you can write a simple wrapper to dofile as follows:
do
local cache={}
local olddofile=dofile
function dofile(x)
if cache[x]==nil then
olddofile(x)
cache[x]=true
end
end
end
based on lhf's answer, but utilising package, you can also do this once:
package.preload["something"]=dofile "/path/to/your/file.lua"
and then use:
local x=require "something"
to get the preloaded package again. but that's a bit abusive...