CODEWITHSUNDEEP
lualua-tablelove2d
David Gallagher
David Gallagher

Reputation: 91

How to reference an object in a table in Lua by its name

This seems like a very straightforward question, but I haven't been able to turn up an answer. I am adding game objects to a table in Lua like this:

local lock = GameObject {
 -- object values and methods
table.insert(objects, lock)

But despite a lot of google searching and reading through the Lua documentation, I cannot figure out how to reference these objects by their names. I think it's because there is a very specific syntax to do so. If anyone could help me out, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1167

Answers (1)

Sam
Sam

Reputation: 2341

You might want to do something like this instead of table.insert. Objects will still be a table.

objects = {}
objects.lock = {}
objects.lock2 = {}

If you then execute

for key, value in pairs(objects) do
  print(key,value)
end

You will get the output

lock2   table: 0x1af3310
lock    table: 0x1af3870

Further explanation

In you question(not the solution above) lock is only the variable name given to it, it is not the name of the index.

In this code snippet, you can see that the items being inserted into objects do not have the variable name recorded within objects. objects is storing an int as the key, and then the inserted table as the value.

objects = {}
local lock = {}
local lock2 = {}

 -- object values and methods
table.insert(objects, lock)
table.insert(objects, lock2)

for key, value in pairs(objects) do
  print(key,value)
  print(type(value))
end

prints

1   table: 0x131b590
table
2   table: 0x131b540
table

test it on repl

Upvotes: 0

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