Difference between something:FindFirstChild("Something") and something.Something?

[Moneypro456789]

Hi Guys, so maybe you understood by the title, it’s very basic, but in curiousity, I want to ask the difference. For example - character:FindFirstChild(“Humanoid”) and character.Humanoid
What does this mean ? Aren’t these both same ? Is there any difference ?

[Dede_4242]

FindFirstChild finds the first child in the hierarchy to have that name, the other takes all of them basically

[DasKairo (Cairo)]

FindFirstChild Looks for the first Instance under a specific pattern, if the pattern is not found, it will return as nil, otherwise it will return an Instance

So for Example, you can do:

local Ex = Example:FindFirstChild("Example") -- Instance or nil

if Ex then -- if Object Exists
    print"object Exists"
else -- If not
    print"object doesnt exist"
end

Normally when you use Instance.Child on something that doesn’t exist, it will error, however if you use FindFirstChild, you can prevent this error:

-- Lets Say the Instance doesn't Exist
print(workspace.Example) -- Errors as Instance doesn't exist

print(workspace:FindFirstChild("Example")) -- nil (Error prevented)

You can even use it to search recursively for Instances.

Simply: Can also be used to look through Descendants:

local Ex = Example:FindFirstChild("Example", true)

Documentation if that helps:

Instance

[xXSanrioSlayer99]

FindFirstChild() is useful for indexing an instance that may or may not exist, where as normal indexing will throw an error if what you are looking for is not there

here is my workspace. ‘jeff’ is not there

so when i try to index workspace.jeff i get an error

instead i can use FindFirstChild to avoid errors and i will recieve nil telling me there is nothing called jeff

[DasKairo (Cairo)]

What I said:

@DasKairo

Normally when you use Tnstance.Child on something that doesn’t exist, it will error, however if you use FindFirstChild , you can prevent this error:

-- Lets Say the Instance doesn't Exist
print(workspace.Example) -- Errors as Instance doesn't exist

print(workspace:FindFirstChild("Example") -- nil (Error prevented)