Copy a color?

Questions
1

I ran into a little issue just now and wondered if there was an easy way around it. Is it possible to copy a color object?

I have the following:

-- global variable
cLightBlue = color(0, 232, 216, 255)

-- in a class, elsewhere:
self.fillColor = cLightBlue
self.fillColor.a = 100

The problem is, this affects anything that uses the cLightBlue colour! So I presume self.fillColor is a reference to my global variable, rather than a copy of it.

Any way around this, or do I manually need to copy each property of the color or something?

Thanks all :slight_smile:

2

I think you’ll need to manually copy, like this:

self.fillColor = color( cLightBlue.r, cLightBlue.g, cLightBlue.b, cLightBlue.a )


```


An alternative would be to define you colour constant as a factory function:


cLightBlue = function() return color(0, 232, 216, 255) end

self.fillColor = cLightBlue()


```


Or define a colour-copy function


function cc(c)
    return color(c.r,c.g,c.b,c.a)
end

self.fillColor = cc( cLightBlue )


```
3

I didn’t actually realise this was the case with user data values like color, vec2, and so on. I’m surprised I haven’t run into the same issue in normal coding.

4

Great, thanks @Simeon. The factory function seems pretty neat :slight_smile: