What's the correct way to access tables in lua?

Question

I've decided to some fun activities with my free time to make some fun addons for Garry's Mod, roleplay.

The addon I'm trying to make is allowing specific doors to be rentable, then when someone rents that door, the main owner will receive periodical payments!

I am having some issues with the table not being accessible though.

-- door is a meta function, a property to all entities. -- in this case it belongs to doors.

cRentableDoors = cRentableDoors or {} -- Global table

    function door:makeRentableSub( doorParent )
    -- GetNWBool() is a function used to network information
    -- on entities from server to client. ( so we can draw HUDs etc )

        if self:GetNWBool( "IsRentable" ) == false or nil then
                self:SetNWBool( "IsRentable", true ) 
                self:SetNWBool( "IsSub", true ) 

                cRentableDoors[doorParent:MapCreationID()] = {
                    MainDoor = doorParent,
                    SubDoors = {{ent = self, key = self:MapCreationID()}}
                }

        end
    end

There's just one issue. when i want to add a few sub doors, the 'SubDoors' table only prints 1 index. Am I overriding something here?

Feel free to ask any questions what you aren't sure about!

Thanks!

`SubDoors = {ent = self, key = self:MapCreationID()}` Strip the other `{}`. Currently `SubDoors` is a table of tables. — Henri Menke, Mar 03 '18 at 00:00
@HenriMenke, turn that into an answer, so it can be accepted and easier to find for others. — Andrew Eisenberg, Mar 04 '18 at 21:15

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 04 '18 at 21:32

The problem is in the line

SubDoors = {{ent = self, key = self:MapCreationID()}}

There you have two levels of braces which makes this expression equivalent to

SubDoors = { [1] = { ent = self, key = self:MapCreationID() } }

that is a table of tables with one entry. Just strip the outer pair of parentheses and you should be fine, i.e.

SubDoors = {ent = self, key = self:MapCreationID()}

What's the correct way to access tables in lua?

1 Answers1