include file and it's content - lua

How do I import or include a file into Lua code. I wanted to fetch the file's content which I am including into function.
What are the functions into Lua which will loads when lua file will get loaded.
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

You normally use either require or dofile, depending of your situation. It is also possible to call the lower level functions loadfile or load if you need more flexibility.
require is used to load library modules. The argument is the name of the module, and Lua then searches for the file in the package.path path. It also maintains a cache of loaded modules, so that the second time you call require for the same name it will only return the cached value.
dofile is simpler. It just take the file path as argument. It loads and executes the code every time it is called.

Related

Lua require error if script is called "table.lua"?

Trying to replicate this simple Lua example (using the improved code in the second post), I encountered the following strange issue:
I copied the code verbatim, but happened to call the first file "table.lua" (instead of "funcs.lua").
The second file was called "main.lua" as in the example.
In my case, whatever I tried, I invariably got the popular error message "attempt to call field 'myfunc' (a nil value)" (as if the require statement had been ignored; but path etc. were all in order).
After two hours of trying and hunting for info, I more or less on a hunch renamed the first file from "table.lua" to "tabble.lua", and then everything promptly worked as expected. Renaming to e.g. "tables.lua" will also work.
Being very new to Lua, I'd still like to understand what exactly went wrong. Initially I thought the reason might be that "table" is a reserved Lua word, but all references I checked do not list it as such.
So what is going on here?
I am using LuaForWindows v5.1.4-46 with the included SciTE editor/IDE (v.1.75).
Thanks for all hints.
The standard libraries math, io, string, …, and table are pre-defined (and pre-loaded) in the Lua interpreter. Because require caches modules by name, saying require "table" will return the standard table library instead of loading your own table module from a file.
A good way to solve the problem is to create a folder and put your library files in there. If the folder is called mylib, then require "mylib.table" will work and load the file.
Alternatively, if you just need to load the file once and do not need the features of require (searching the file in a number of directories, caching loaded libraries), you can use loadfile: Change require "table" to loadfile "./table.lua" () (where ./table.lua should be the full (relative is fine) path to the file.)

in lua (love2D), i want to import a library in a subfolder, the file in there will not find the next module it requires

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.

Lua Sockets Module cpath

I'm trying to use the sockets module in a script and I keep encountering a issue where the script is unable to find socket.core. Is there anyway for me to point to exactly where the core.dll is? I've tried using cpath and I can never seem to get it to work. I just want to be able to say "C:/folder/folder/folder/core.dll"
package.cpath = 'F:/Folder/Foldertwo/Game/agame/Beta/Scripts/libs/socket/?.dll;' .. package.cpath
#EgorSkriptunoff is correct in his comment: socket.lua (which is a lua module) loads socket.core (which is a dynamic library), so you won't be able to load it from folder/core.dll as the default searcher will be looking for socket/core.dll.
If you really want to load it from folder/core.dll, you may try to load it yourself and assign the returned value to package.preload['socket.core']. This way when socket.lua loads the module, it will get the value to return from package.preload key without loading the module.

How to add function definition in Lua without requiring that a file be loaded?

I am using the C Fuzzy API and I want to load function module contained in a file lets say mycalculator.lua. This seem to run fine however when I later try to run another file A.lua that requires 'mycalculator' it does not work unless the mycalculator.lua file is available on the file system to reload. I am trying to just load it into the system and then have it available without having the mycalculator.lua in the file system. It there any way to have lua system keep the definition without loading it again? Basically I convert the mycalculator.lua into a string and then run it. I don't want to put mycalculator.lua file into the file system, I just want to hand it over as a string and then be able to require it in the next string I pass to the stack Thanks
There is a difference between simply executing a Lua script and loading a Lua module. If you wish to load a Lua module, then you must actually load a Lua module exactly as a script would: by calling require.
Since you appear to be new to Lua, I should probably explain this. You've probably seen code like this in Lua scripts:
require 'mycalculator'
That is not some special statement to Lua. That is a function call. It is just some syntactic sugar for:
require('mycalculator')
Functions in Lua can be called with NAME VALUE syntax instead of NAME(...) syntax, but it only allows you to send one parameter. And the parameter must be a literal (or table constructor).
In order to call the Lua require function from C, you must use the Lua stack. You must fetch the function from the global table by using lua_getfield(L, LUA_GLOBALSINDEX, "require"); Then, you push a string onto the stack containing the name of the module to load. Then, you use lua_pcall or whatever Lua function calling function to call it.

Do file only once in Lua

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...

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