Selecting a table by name.

swiftjuan

I have some .lua files that are my decks of cards. Each .lua file represents a deck and is really just a simple array like deck1 = {card1,card2,card3}

I have a picker that allows a player to select a deck like so: selected_deck = images[counter] the result of that selection would be the deck I want. In this case deck1 is the value of selected_deck

Here is my problem I need to call the lua table that corresponds with the value selected_deck, but I can't use the selected_deck value although it has the same name of my table(deck1), it does not actually reference the table. It is a variable out on its own.

How do I select deck1 table at this stage so that I can read the cards out of it? Thanks.

swiftjuan

I should add that normally I would call require on the lua file by the images[counter] value like require images[counter].."lua" and load it as needed. I can't do this in Codea I don't think.

Ignatz

@swiftjuan - you can do it at least two ways

1- set up a deck class, then you can have a table of decks

or (especially if you are unfamiliar with classes)

2- put your decks in their own table, eg

decks={}
decks[1]={card1,card2,card3}
decks[2]={card1,card2,card3}
--or if you've already created your decks in their own variables
decks["deck 1"]=deck1
decks["deck 2"]=deck2
--or perhaps
decks={deck1={card1,card2,card3},
       deck2={card1,card2,card3}, etc

Then it is quite easy to refer to the deck you want by looking it up in decks.

LoopSpace

If your tables are global, you can access them via the _G table: _G[var] is equivalent to var. So you could do _G["deck" .. choice].

An alternative which is closer to what you describe in your second post is to have the decks in a second project. Then you can read the file using readProjectTab (I think) without it being automatically loaded. You'd have to use loadstring to process it, though. You could be a bit fancy and have them in the same project but as comment files: stick --[[ at start and --]] at end (maybe --[==[ and ]==]-- if you have block comments already in the file). Then after reading it in via readProjectTab, strip off the comment lines before passing it to loadstring.

swiftjuan

Thanks for the feedback. LoopSpace, I came up with the same idea. Here is what I did:

added tab called "animals" which is the name of the deck and added the string with all my animals like so. --,duck,pig,cat,dog,lion

In main.lua. I turn the string into a table without the first element--. Now I am free to read out the deck.

The great thing is that every time I add a new deck, I just create a lua file for the deck, and add the deck name to another tab called packs. I do not have to alter main.lua at all to add decks.

I hoping to provider additional decks for a an in app purchase, so this was essential.