Ok here goes...
I have been experimenting on various examples of declaring functions with "self" in the parameters.
I don't have full understanding of this which is what I'm trying to fully understand. I'm a complete beginner, but I am compelled to grasp this fully.
The 2 examples below return the same results, although in example 2, if I don't declare "self = {}" within the function, I need to place "self" (or the ":") in the function parameters for it to work. Is this the whole deal with "self"?
Are there other implications when using "self"?
Example 1
function Character.new(x)
self = {}
self.name = x
return self.name
end
a = Character
b = Character
hobbit = a.new ("Frodo")
dragon = b.new ("Smaug")
print (hobbit)
print (dragon)
Example 2
Character = {}
function Character:new(x)
self.name = x
return self.name
end
a = Character
b = Character
hobbit = a:new ("Frodo")
dragon = b:new ("Smaug")
print (hobbit)
print (dragon)
;^)
Zalokin
You're using global variables when you should be creating instances.
Try these lines instead, they may help you understand:
-- example 1
print (hobbit)
print(self.name)
print (dragon)
print(self.name)
and
-- example 2
print (hobbit)
print(Character.name)
print (dragon)
print(Character.name)
: lets you access the table which includes the function from within the function without an explicit (first argument) pass. It can be used both when defining and calling a function.
The example below contains a table t. The table has 3 functions (a,b and c) and a string entry under the key greeting.
All the function/method calls print the same string "hello user".
Notice how you can still call a method (a function which has its container table as the first argument) the same way as a normal function, but you have to explicitly pass the table as the first argument.
The self argument can be called what ever you want and you can still call the function with a : as long as you use the correct argument name inside the function (not self in this case). The function c serves as an example of that.
It is basically just syntax sugar.
local t = {}
t.greeting = "hello"
function t:a(name)
print(self.greeting, name)
end
function t.b(self, name)
print(self.greeting, name)
end
function t.c(myself, name)
print(myself.greeting, name)
end
t.a(t, "user")
t:a("user")
t.b(t, "user")
t:b("user")
t.c(t, "user")
t:c("user")
Lets say for example I have made a function and it's purpose is to analyze another function supplied as a parameter and return whether or not the function specified will return anything, and if so what value it will return.
local function CheckFunctionReturn(func)
--return whether func would return anything.
end
local function myFunc()
return 123;
end
CheckFunctionReturn(myFunc);
I am stuck with this. Perhaps there is a function in the debug library that can help? I would appreciate any help.
None of the functions in the debug library can do this. Instead you need to analyse the source code or the bytecode to find out what the program will do. There are some resources available on the Lua wiki, and others have given good suggestions above as well.
Note that the problem of whether an arbitrary function will return or not when it is given arbitrary input is the halting problem, and was proven to be impossible to solve in the general case by Alan Turing back in 1936. However, for simple functions and/or inputs it is solvable, so if your specific case is simple enough you might be able to do it.
This is quick-and-dirty solution (only Lua 5.1, only LE architecture), which is likely to work in most cases, but not always.
It only answers the question "Whether or not this function would return some values?"
local function CheckFunctionReturn(func)
-- returns true if func would return anything
local d = string.dump(func)
assert(d:sub(1,5) == "\27LuaQ") -- only Lua 5.1
-- search for code before first "return" (0x0080001E)
d = d:match"^.-\30%z\128%z"
-- search for "return" with non-zero number of returned values
for pos = #d % 4 + 1, #d, 4 do
local b1, b2, b3, b4 = d:byte(pos, pos+3)
local dword = b1 + 256 * (b2 + 256 * (b3 + 256 * b4))
local OpCode, BC = dword % 64, math.floor(dword/16384)
local B, C = math.floor(BC/512), BC % 512
if OpCode == 30 and C == 0 and B ~= 1 then
return true
end
end
return false
end
print(CheckFunctionReturn(aFunctionToBeAnalyzed));
local function CheckFunctionReturn(func)
print(type(func()))
end
local function myFunc()
return 123;
end
CheckFunctionReturn(myFunc);
Am I missing something?
The Lua built-in debug API docs says
The return hook: is called when the interpreter returns from a function. The hook is called just before Lua leaves the function. There is no standard way to access the values to be returned by the function.
I was able to store functions into a table. But now I have no idea of how to invoke them. The final table will have about 100 calls, so if possible, I'd like to invoke them as if in a foreach loop. Thanks!
Here is how the table was defined:
game_level_hints = game_level_hints or {}
game_level_hints.levels = {}
game_level_hints.levels["level0"] = function()
return
{
[on_scene("scene0")] =
{
talk("hint0"),
talk("hint1"),
talk("hint2")
},
[on_scene("scene1")] =
{
talk("hint0"),
talk("hint1"),
talk("hint2")
}
}
end
Aaand the function definitions:
function on_scene(sceneId)
-- some code
return sceneId
end
function talk(areaId)
-- some code
return areaId
end
EDIT:
I modified the functions so they'll have a little more context. Basically, they return strings now. And what I was hoping to happen is that at then end of invoking the functions, I'll have a table (ideally the levels table) containing all these strings.
Short answer: to call a function (reference) stored in an array, you just add (parameters), as you'd normally do:
local function func(a,b,c) return a,b,c end
local a = {myfunc = func}
print(a.myfunc(3,4,5)) -- prints 3,4,5
In fact, you can simplify this to
local a = {myfunc = function(a,b,c) return a,b,c end}
print(a.myfunc(3,4,5)) -- prints 3,4,5
Long answer: You don't describe what your expected results are, but what you wrote is likely not to do what you expect it to do. Take this fragment:
game_level_hints.levels["level0"] = function()
return
{
[on_scene("scene0")] =
{
talk("hint0"),
}
}
end
[This paragraph no longer applies after the question has been updated] You reference on_scene and talk functions, but you don't "store" those functions in the table (since you explicitly referenced them in your question, I presume the question is about these functions). You actually call these functions and store the values they return (they both return nil), so when this fragment is executed, you get "table index is nil" error as you are trying to store nil using nil as the index.
If you want to call the function you stored in game_level_hints.levels["level0"], you just do game_level_hints.levels["level0"]()
Using what you guys answered and commented, I was able to come up with the following code as a solution:
asd = game_level_hints.levels["level0"]()
Now, asd contains the area strings I need. Although ideally, I intended to be able to access the data like:
asd[1][1]
accessing it like:
asd["scene0"][1]
to retrieve the area data would suffice. I'll just have to work around the keys.
Thanks, guys.
It's not really clear what you're trying to do. Inside your anonymous function, you're returning a table that uses on_scene's return value as keys. But your on_scene doesn't return anything. Same thing for talk.
I'm going to assume that you wanted on_scene and talk to get called when invoking each levels in your game_level_hints table.
If so, this is how you can do it:
local maxlevel = 99
for i = 0, maxlevel do
game_level_hints.levels["level" .. i] = function()
on_scene("scene" .. i)
talk("hint" .. i)
end
end
-- ...
for levelname, levelfunc in pairs(game_level_hints.levels) do
levelfunc()
end
In the Lua wiki I found a way to define default values for missing arguments:
function myfunction(a,b,c)
b = b or 7
c = c or 5
print (a,b,c)
end
Is that the only way? The PHP style myfunction (a,b=7,c=5) does not seem to work. Not that the Lua way doesn't work, I am just wondering if this is the only way to do it.
If you want named arguments and default values like PHP or Python, you can call your function with a table constructor:
myfunction{a,b=3,c=2}
(This is seen in many places in Lua, such as the advanced forms of LuaSocket's protocol modules and constructors in IUPLua.)
The function itself could have a signature like this:
function myfunction(t)
setmetatable(t,{__index={b=7, c=5}})
local a, b, c =
t[1] or t.a,
t[2] or t.b,
t[3] or t.c
-- function continues down here...
end
Any values missing from the table of parameters will be taken from the __index table in its metatable (see the documentation on metatables).
Of course, more advanced parameter styles are possible using table constructors and functions- you can write whatever you need. For example, here is a function that constructs a function that takes named-or-positional argument tables from a table defining the parameter names and default values and a function taking a regular argument list.
As a non-language-level feature, such calls can be changed to provide new behaviors and semantics:
Variables could be made to accept more than one name
Positional variables and keyword variables can be interspersed - and defining both can give precedence to either (or cause an error)
Keyword-only positionless variables can be made, as well as nameless position-only ones
The fairly-verbose table construction could be done by parsing a string
The argument list could be used verbatim if the function is called with something other than 1 table
Some useful functions for writing argument translators are unpack (moving to table.unpack in 5.2), setfenv (deprecated in 5.2 with the new _ENV construction), and select (which returns a single value from a given argument list, or the length of the list with '#').
In my opinion there isn't another way. That's just the Lua mentality: no frills, and except for some syntactic sugar, no redundant ways of doing simple things.
Technically, there's b = b == nil and 7 or b (which should be used in the case where false is a valid value as false or 7 evaluates to 7), but that's probably not what you're looking for.
The only way i've found so far that makes any sense is to do something like this:
function new(params)
params = params or {}
options = {
name = "Object name"
}
for k,v in pairs(params) do options[k] = v end
some_var = options.name
end
new({ name = "test" })
new()
If your function expects neither Boolean false nor nil to be passed as parameter values, your suggested approach is fine:
function test1(param)
local default = 10
param = param or default
return param
end
--[[
test1(): [10]
test1(nil): [10]
test1(true): [true]
test1(false): [10]
]]
If your function allows Boolean false, but not nil, to be passed as the parameter value, you can check for the presence of nil, as suggested by Stuart P. Bentley, as long as the default value is not Boolean false:
function test2(param)
local default = 10
param = (param == nil and default) or param
return param
end
--[[
test2(): [10]
test2(nil): [10]
test2(true): [true]
test2(false): [false]
]]
The above approach breaks when the default value is Boolean false:
function test3(param)
local default = false
param = (param == nil and default) or param
return param
end
--[[
test3(): [nil]
test3(nil): [nil]
test3(true): [true]
test3(false): [false]
]]
Interestingly, reversing the order of the conditional checks does allow Boolean false to be the default value, and is nominally more performant:
function test4(param)
local default = false
param = param or (param == nil and default)
return param
end
--[[
test4(): [false]
test4(nil): [false]
test4(true): [true]
test4(false): [false]
]]
This approach works for reasons that seem counter-intuitive until further examination, upon which they are discovered to be kind of clever.
If you want default parameters for functions that do allow nil values to be passed, you'll need to do something even uglier, like using variadic parameters:
function test5(...)
local argN = select('#', ...)
local default = false
local param = default
if argN > 0 then
local args = {...}
param = args[1]
end
return param
end
--[[
test5(): [false]
test5(nil): [nil]
test5(true): [true]
test5(false): [false]
]]
Of course, variadic parameters completely thwart auto-completion and linting of function parameters in functions that use them.
Short answer is that it's simplest and best way . in lua , variables by default equal with nil . this means if we don't pass argument to lua functions ,the argument is exits but is nil and lua programmers uses of this lua attribute for set the default value .
also it's not a way for set default value but you can use following function
this function create a error is you don't pass values to arguments
function myFn(arg1 , arg2)
err = arg1 and arg2
if not err then error("argument") end
-- or
if not arg1 and arg2 then error("msg") end
but it's not a good way and better is don't use of this function
and in diagrams shows optional argument in [,arg]
function args(a1 [,a2])
-- some
end
function args ( a1 [,a2[,a3]])
-- some
end
As always, "Lua gives you the power, you build the mechanisms". The first distinction to make here is that between named parameters and the commonly used parameter list.
The parameter list
Assuming all your args are given in the parameter list as follows, they will all be initialized. At this point, you can't distinguish between "wasn't passed" and "was passed as nil" - both will simply be nil. Your options for setting defaults are:
Using the or operator if you expect a truthy value (not nil or false). Defaulting to something even if false is given might be a feature in this case.
Using an explicit nil check param == nil, used either as if param == nil then param = default end or the typical Lua ternary construct param == nil and default or param.
If you find yourself frequently repeating the patterns from point (2), you might want to declare a function:
function default(value, default_value)
if value == nil then return default_value end
return value
end
(whether to use global or local scope for this function is another issue I won't get into here).
I've included all three ways the following example:
function f(x, y, z, w)
x = x or 1
y = y == nil and 2 or y
if z == nil then z == 3 end
w = default(w, 4
print(x, y, z, w)
end
f()
f(1)
f(1, 2)
f(1, 2, 3)
f(1, 2, 3, 4)
note that this also allows omitting arguments inbetween; trailing nil arguments will also be treated as absent:
f(nil)
f(nil, 2, 3)
f(nil, 2, nil, 4)
f(1, 2, 3, nil)
Varargs
A lesser known feature of Lua is the ability to actually determine how many arguments were passed, including the ability to distinguish between explicitly passed nil arguments and "no argument" through the select function. Let's rewrite our function using this:
function f(...)
local n_args = select("#", ...) -- number of arguments passed
local x, y, z, w = ...
if n_args < 4 then w = 4 end
if n_args < 3 then z = 3 end
if n_args < 2 then y = 2 end
if n_args < 1 then x = 1 end
print(x, y, z, w)
end
f() -- prints "1 2 3 4"
f(nil) -- prints "nil 2 3 4"
f(1, nil) -- prints "1 nil 3 4"
f(1, nil, 3) -- prints "1 nil 3 4"
f(nil, nil, nil, nil) -- prints 4x nil
Caveat: (1) the argument list got dragged into the function, hurting readability (2) this is rather cumbersome to write manually, and should probably be abstracted away, perhaps time using a wrapper function wrap_defaults({1, 2, 3, 4}, f) that supplies the defaults as appropriate. Implementation of this is left up to the reader as an exercise (hint: the straightforward way would first collect the args into a garbage table, then unpack that after setting the defaults).
Table calls
Lua provides syntactic sugar for calling functions with a single table as the only argument: f{...} is equivalent to f({...}). Furthermore, {f(...)} can be used to capture a vararg returned by f (caveat: if f returns nils, the table will have holes in it's list part).
Tables also allow implementing named "arguments" as table fields: Tables allow mixing a list and a hash part, making f{1, named_arg = 2} perfectly valid Lua.
In terms of limitations, the advantage of table call is that it only leaves a single argument - the table - on the stack rather than multiple arguments. For recursive functions, this allows hitting the stack overflow later. Since PUC Lua drastically increased the stack limit to ~1M this isn't much of an issue anymore; LuaJIT still has a stack limit of ~65k however, and PUC Lua 5.1 is even lower at around 15k.
In terms of performance & memory consumption, the table call is obviously worse: It requires Lua to build a garbage table, which will then waste memory until the GC gets rid of it. Garbage parameter tables should therefore probably not be used in hotspots where plenty of calls happen. Indexing a hashmap is also obviously slower than getting values straight off the stack.
That said, let's examine the ways to implement defaults for tables:
Unpacking / Destructuring
unpack (table.unpack in later versions (5.2+)) can be used to convert a table into a vararg, which can be treated like a parameter list; note however that in Lua the list part can't have trailing nil values, not allowing you to distinguish "no value" and nil. Unpacking / destructuring to locals also helps performance since it gets rid of repeated table indexing.
function f(params)
local x, y, z, w = unpack(params)
-- use same code as if x, y, z, w were regular params
end
f{1, 2, nil}
if you use named fields, you'll have to explicitly destructure those:
function f(params)
local x, y, z, w = params.x, params.y, params.z, params.w
-- use same code as if x, y, z, w were regular params
end
f{x = 1, w = 4}
mix & match is possible:
function f(params)
local x, y, z = unpack(params)
local w = params.w
-- use same code as if x, y, z, w were regular params
end
f{1, 2, w = 4}
Metatables
The __index metatable field can be used to set a table which is indexed with name if params.name is nil, providing defaults for nil values. One major drawback of setting a metatable on a passed table is that the passed table's metatable will be lost, perhaps leading to unexpected behavior on the caller's end. You could use getmetatable and setmetatable to restore the metatable after you're done operating with the params, but that would be rather dirty, hence I would recommend against it.
Bad
function f(params)
setmetatable(params, {__index = {x = 1, y = 2, z = 3, w = 4}})
-- use params.[xyzw], possibly unpacking / destructuring
end
f{x = 1}
in addition to the presumably garbage params table, this will create (1) a garbage metatable and (2) a garbage default table every time the function is called. This is pretty bad. Since the metatable is constant, simply drag it out of the function, making it an upvalue:
Okay
local defaults_metatable = {__index = {x = 1, y = 2, z = 3, w = 4}}
function f(params)
setmetatable(params, defaults_metatable)
-- use params.[xyzw], possibly unpacking / destructuring
end
Avoiding metatables
If you want a default table without the hackyness of metatables, consider once again writing yourself a helper function to complete a table with default values:
local function complete(params, defaults)
for param, default in pairs(defaults) do
if params[param] == nil then
params[param] = default
end
end
end
this will change the params table, properly setting the defaults; use as params = complete(params, defaults). Again, remember to drag the defaults table out of the function.