CODEWITHSUNDEEP
lua
gregf
gregf

Reputation: 1101

how can I assign table names to variables?

I have a table in lua with some data.

sometable = { 
    {name = "bob", something = "foo"},
    {name = "greg", something = "bar"}
}

I then want to loop through the table and assign a number to each name as a variable. New to lua and tried it like this.

for i,t in ipairs(sometable) do
    t.name = i
end

I was then assuming print("name1", bob) would give me name1 = 1. Right now I'm getting nil. So I'm back to my ugly static list of variables till some kind soul tells me how I'm an idiot.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1465

Answers (2)

Doug Currie
Doug Currie

Reputation: 41180

> sometable = {{name = "bob", something = "foo"},{name = "greg", something = "bar"}}
> for i,t in ipairs(sometable) do t[t.name] = i end
> for i,t in ipairs(sometable) do for j,u in pairs (t) do print (j,u) end end      
name  bob
something foo
bob   1
greg  2
something bar
name  greg
> return sometable[1].bob
1>

Upvotes: 4

Tyler Levine
Tyler Levine

Reputation: 393

The ipairs function will iterate only through numerically indexed tables in ascending order.

What you want to use is the pairs function. It will iterate over every key in the table, no matter what type it is.

Upvotes: -1

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