How can I use a string in a table?

Question

I need to use a string value as a table, in order to restore points to a player when they reconnect to a game server. This string value is their profile ID, which never changes and I need to put data inside the string value (Kills, deaths, head shots) in order to effectively restore these points. I have had a quick look on the internet but I have not found much because I don't know what this specific thing is actually called. To make it easier, here's what I have so far:

if (not Omega.Playertable) then
    Omega.Playertable = {}; 
    System.LogAlways("Set static record table on first connect");
end
local ID = g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id);
if (not Omega.Playertable.ID) then
    table.insert(Omega.Playertable, ID);
    Omega.Playertable.g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id).Kills=0;
    Omega.Playertable.g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id).Deaths=0;
    Omega.Playertable.g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id).Headshots=0;
else
    local Kills=Omega.Playertable.g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id).Kills;
    local Deaths=Omega.Playertable.g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id).Deaths;
    local Headshots=Omega.Playertable.g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id).Headshots;
    g_gameRules.game:SetSynchedEntityValue(playerId, 101, Kills);
    g_gameRules.game:SetSynchedEntityValue(playerId, 100, Deaths);
    g_gameRules.game:SetSynchedEntityValue(playerId, 102, Headshots);
end

As you can see, I've tried adding their ID into the table and adding info based on this. I cannot get the system to read the 'ID' value that I set before, so I tried adding the code that gets the ID instead, and it doesn't work. The ID is unique to each player so I cannot use a simple number system for this.

Could someone point out to me what I have done wrong here? If I manage to fix the problem, I will answer my own question on here so that it can be helpful to other users.

OK, so an example string containing your additional metadata might be `35638846.12.34.45` for 12 kills, 34 deaths, 45 headshots? — Robert Harvey, Jun 06 '13 at 21:47
Looks like you're asking for a table (de)serialization solution. Have a look at http://lua-users.org/wiki/TableSerialization — rkhayrov, Jun 07 '13 at 04:12

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 06 '13 at 22:06

1

Try this:

s="35638846.12.34.45"
id,kills,deaths,headshots=s:match("(.-)%.(.-)%.(.-)%.(.-)$")
print(id,kills,deaths,headshots)

But note that these values are strings. If you're using them as numbers, use tonumber to convert them.

answered Jun 06 '13 at 22:06

lhf

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@AlexanderStopher, I don't really understand what you're trying to do. The code above only shows how to extract the data in the format mentioned in a comment. – lhf Jun 07 '13 at 11:40

dualed · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-09T16:55:13.820

It seems to me that you are using the wrong table indexing syntax.

Indexing a table by a variables value in Lua is done with the [] syntax.

Furthermore, in Lua Foo.bar is syntactic sugar for Foo["bar"] both formats are interchangeable, but the . variant has limitations on which characters you can use with it. For example Foo["\n.*#%!"] is a valid table index, but you certainly can't write this: Foo.\n.*#%!

Also table.insert(t, v) inserts v at the end of the array part of the table. That means if you do this

foo = {};
foo.X = "Some value";
table.insert(foo, "X");

This is what you get

{
  X   = "Some value"
  [1] = "X"
}

That means, if I apply this to the code you gave us, this is what you probably had in mind:

if (not Omega.Playertable) then
    Omega.Playertable = {}; 
    System.LogAlways("Set static record table on first connect");
end
local ID = g_gameRules.game:GetProfileId(player.id);
if (not Omega.Playertable[ID]) then
    Omega.Playertable[ID] = {};
    Omega.Playertable[ID].Kills=0;
    Omega.Playertable[ID].Deaths=0;
    Omega.Playertable[ID].Headshots=0;
else
    local Kills = Omega.Playertable[ID].Kills;
    local Deaths = Omega.Playertable[ID].Deaths;
    local Headshots = Omega.Playertable[ID].Headshots;
    g_gameRules.game:SetSynchedEntityValue(playerId, 101, Kills);
    g_gameRules.game:SetSynchedEntityValue(playerId, 100, Deaths);
    g_gameRules.game:SetSynchedEntityValue(playerId, 102, Headshots);
end

How can I use a string in a table?

2 Answers2