Practical example of metatables use?

Hi, i wan’t to know where i can use metatables, because i heared that they are powerfull, but i don’t know where i can use it, any practical example, idk , pet system, guns or something else???

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I know this isn’t exactly what your looking for but this might help: https://youtu.be/2NVNKPr-7HE

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explains metatables and simple way of using them with OOP

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thanks, soo simply meta tables are something like patterns and functions for tables

like metatables is a stronger table with more uses and causes

I just thought I’d input about metatables as whilst they can be quite useful to enable structure in your code, in Roblox at least theirs key differences which doesn’t make them the same as other programming languages: Calling them “powerful” is not really that true, at least not on Roblox.

As suggested in the video posted in @michael1adnan 's post, the key point of a metatable is that it allows us to do an object oriented approach → in other words we an create Objects. An object in coding is basically just a way to say “my gun has behaviours that are described by its functions” instead of “my gun is a group of functions with a set of behaviours within these functions”. When driving a car vs a truck, you don’t say driving a car is the same as a truck - this is what object orientation essentially allows us to do.

They key difference with Roblox really is that it doesn’t support all of the object oriented principles directly, whilst you can do object oriented principles (such as inheritance), theirs no direct and easy path to achieve this unlike in other programming languages. You should still try and use metatables (or at least object oriented ideology) as it provides a level of structure.

In short really, a module script does the exact same thing a metatable does for the most part as you can keep a bunch of properties within the module to handle something. The main advantage to a metatable however in regards to code efficiency is that you do not need to do any extra requires() and you can then turn your module script into a printer (which saves time). Everything from your events to your scripts in Roblox are already classes, so if you can reference one brick from another brick you’ve already done handling with object orientation!

Just learning in general about how to organise your code more efficiently is what metatables are useful for.

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