Lua:Variables & Types
NOTE: I recommend you have the Devtool Console handy to mess around with some of the stuff covered here.
Following the concept of chunks and statements, the next most important subject to cover is variables, and types.
Variable: A custom-made keyword that can be used to represent a value
Type: The sort of value that is in a variable. Lua types include: boolean, string, number, table, nil, function. There are more, but we won’t need them.
But before going deeper into a definition, let’s look at an example:
a = 10
b = 5
c = a + b
We can see that each of those letters in the chunk above is a variable, which are each assigned a value. In this case, variable a is assigned the value 10, variable b is assigned the value 5, and the variable c is assigned the value of a plus the value of b. This instance (c = a + b) works a lot like algebra – you aren’t making “c = ab”, but you’re adding the value of a (10) to the value of b (5), to get the result of 15.
The coolest thing about variables is their dynamism. They can be assigned to any type, change to any type, and they can infinitely change values. Let’s take the above code, and mess with it a little bit.
NOTE: From this point on, you’ll see → after out() calls. This is to specify what text is actually output.
a = 10
b = 5
c = a + b
out(a) → 10
out(b) → 5
out(c) → 15
a = 25
out(a) → 25
out(c) → 15
c = a + b
out(c) → 30
I wanted to point out an important thing with this example. If a variable is assigned to the values of some other variables (c = a + b), it will do the calculation and assignment the moment that the statement is called. If either variable (a or b) is changed after the assignment statement, the assigned variable’s (c) value (15) won’t change. It takes the variable’s value, not the variable itself.
So, we see here that variables can be numbers, which is one of the primary types in Lua.
Number: any numerical value, within a specific number range (a much bigger number than needs to be worried about)
As we saw above, we can perform some basic arithmetic on numbers.
a = 5
b = 2 - 0.34
c = a + b
d = c * 2
e = d / 3
out(c) → 7.56
out(d) → 15.12
out(e) → 5.04
String: any alphanumerical value, within quotation marks (“” or ”). Similar to numbers, size does not matter, Lua can handle millions of characters within a string.
Like arithmetic for numbers, one can concatenate strings (along with many other stuffs!) to combine several, using the .. operator.
a = “This “; b = “is “; c = “an “; d = “example.”
out(a .. b .. c .. d) → This is an example.
NOTE: Yes, you can have several statements on the same line in Lua! The semi-colons are not necessary, I added them for extra readability.
While on the subject, you can concat (cool-kid for concatenate) string literals and variables.
a = "example"
out("This is an " .. a) → This is an example
Boolean: a true or false value.
a = false
out(a) → false
out(a == false) → true
The above probably looks a little weird, but that’s because we’re learning a new operator! The == operator checks for equality, whereas the = operator assigns a value. The final statement above reads “output the result of a == false”. Since a DOES equal false, it prints “true”.
It’s very important to note that any variable can be treated as a boolean, such as when using the “if something then” statement, or by comparing it to a boolean. If a non-boolean variable is treated as a boolean, it will be converted to false if the value is nil or false; otherwise, it will be converted to true.
a = 0
b = nil
out(a) → 0
out(a == false) → false
out(b == false) → true
In this case, a does NOT equal false, because it has a value to it that isn’t false or nil. By the same card, b DOES equal false.
You’re probably asking by now, what IS nil? I’ve mentioned it a number of times already, you’re probably ready to lear about it. Here we go!
Nil: the absence of data.
If one were to try to print a non-existent variable, the result would be nil. That’s because there is no data for that variable.
out(a) → nil
a = 5
out(a) → 5
Nil is a good way to check whether or not something exists, and we’ll, towards the bottom of this lesson, talk about how to type-check this data in our scripts to see if variables are NOT nil, and thus exist.
Nil is also a good way to clear away variables that you don’t want to use anymore. There’s a more realistic way of doing it, and this probably won’t be necessary for most of what you will be doing, but I like to give a full knowledge.
a = 5
out(a) → 5
a = nil -- Memory deallocated, bye "a"!
out(a) → nil
Lastly, it’s important to note that nil is not the same as null, though they look quick similar. We’ll cover that soon-ish, when we get into more CA script interfaces (like FACTION_SCRIPT_INTERFACE that we saw a few lessons ago).
Function: a definition for a chunk that can be called at any point, after being defined.
There are two types of functions – an anonymous function, and a named function. An anonymous function has no name (clearly), so it cannot be called further on in the script. We use anonymous functions relatively frequently, but our focus now will be on named functions, which are functions assigned to a variable.
a = 10
example = out
example(a) → 10
Yes, that’s valid! You can actually assign a variable to a function like, it’s pretty cool! We have syntactic sugar for assigning a variable to a function, however, and it’s more common to see script like that:
function example(text)
out(text)
end
example("Testing!") → Testing!
example("A Cooler Test!") → A Cooler Test!
As an added bonus, we’re getting a quick sneak peak at one of the upcoming tutorials: parameters and arguments, for functions. In the above function, “text” is a parameter for example(), which is then passed along to out and triggers that function within the chunk.
Table: a collection of more than one piece of data.
There are several types of tables, which we’ll cover later on. I’d like to first look at the array version of tables, the simplest and most common.
a = 5
b = 10
c = 17
table = {
a,
b,
c
} -- assign the three *values* of the variables to the table
out(table[1]) → 5 -- Lua tables start at index 1: we're showing the first element of our table, that is, the item on index 1!
out(table[2]) → 10
out(table[3]) → 17
out(table[4]) → nil -- doesn't exist!
NOTE for programmers: Arrays in Lua start at index ONE, not index ZERO. table[0] would be invalid in the above example! If you get into other programming languages, you'll understand why explaining this was important.
Arrays are numbered automatically, so it really reads “the first index of table is 5, the second index of table is 10”, and so on. You access those indexes by using the [num\] operator, which we’ll look further at in the next tables tutorial later on. The reason this works, however, is because Lua is automatically numbering these values, giving them a key. When you make an array like that, Lua reads it more like the following:
a = 5
b = 10
c = 17
table = {
[1] = a,
[2] = b,
[3] = c
}
The other major type of tables is a map, which works by manually assigning the key of a value instead of letting Lua automatically number them, like in arrays.
a = 5
b = 10
c = 15
table = {
["five"] = a,
["ten"] = b,
["fifteen"] = c
}
out(table["five"]) → 5
out(table["ten"]) → 10
out(table["fifteen"]) → 15
Maps will come into some great use pretty soon, but for now I just wanted to introduce you to how they look.
For now, you’ve done well, and I haven’t even challenged you yet!
Challenge 1
Go to repl.it (covered in the Foreword), and mess with all this stuff! Use print(whatever), where whatever is what you want to print, in lieu of out().
Type-Checking
And before we say goodbye, let’s look at a few more CA functions. These ones can type-check for us, seeing if a variable is, for instance, a string.
The list is as follows:
- is_nil(variable)
- is_string(variable)
- is_number(variable)
- is_boolean(variable)
- is_function(variable)
- is_table(variable)
a = 5
b = nil
c = {1, 2, 3, 5, 70}
function d() end
out(is_number(a)) → true
out(is_nil(b)) → true
out(is_table(c)) → true
out(is_function(d)) → true