Lua:Scopes & Stuff

A super important concept in Lua is the concept of scope. Every single variable made has a scope, which is used to define where a variable can be accessed.

By default, all variables are global, which means they’re in the entire global environment. The global environment is a slightly-fancy way of saying “available within the entire program”. When writing Total War scripts, it’s a little suboptimal to use global variables, for a few reasons – 1) What if someone else wants to use a variable named a, and you do as well? This would force you to have a fully unique name for every single variable everywhere. Kinda a pain! 2) Saving that variable globally is taking up memory, since that variable will never be destroyed. It will take a lot of work to actually cause performance issues, but it’s good to be mindful of. 3) What if we want our variable to be a secret? Huh? They can’t get our birthday present! gollum

And all this is where the keyword local comes in. The local keyword defines a specific scope for a variable, and prevents them from being a global variable.

function example()
    local var = "Hello World!"
    out(var)
end

example() → Hello World!
out(var) → nil -- the variable "var" doesn't exist here!

In this example, the variable var is defined within the function example‘s definition. That means that var is only available from where it is defined (ie. local var =) to where the scope ends. In this case, the scope ends at the end keyword.

This is as good a time as any to look at the other ways scope can be defined. A variable can be scoped to the root of a script, or any number of nestled scopes within that root.

Other key-words other than function that define a scope (and their end point) are as follows:

• do –[[ the scope ]] end
• function function_name() –[[ the scope ]] end
• if –[[ whatever ]] then –[[ the scope ]] end
• while –[[ whatever ]] then –[[ the scope ]] end

Let’s take a slightly-complicated look at that:

local a = 5 -- visible to everything BELOW this line!

function example_thing()
    local b = a -- visible to everything BELOW this line, until the "end" that matches "function"
    do 
        local c = 15 -- visible to everything BELOW this line, until the "end" that matches "do"
        out(c) → 15
        out(b) → 5
    end
    out(b) → 5
    -- c is NOT available here!
end

-- b and c are NOT available here!
out(a) → 5

This is a good point as any to explain two things, and issue two directives:

1. ALWAYS use the keyword local.
2. ALWAYS use good indentations! Scopes should be easily detected.

Be smart with where exactly the term “local” is used – you’ll pick up how later on as you go and pick my brain, but for now, understand that you must ALWAYS put the keyword local before a variable!

As you can see with the example_thing() function above, proper indentation is a GREAT way to visibly see scopes and quickly tell where a variable is and isn’t available.