Selecting a table by name.

Questions
1

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 :slight_smile: 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.

2

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.

3

@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.

4

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.

5

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.