Having a shared function (shared.function)

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#1

Hey! Before I begin I want to clarify; I’m not interested in whether using shared is good design or not; I just want to learn what I’m doing wrong in this context and why.

I am unsure of how to write a function that is accessible through all scripts with shared. I thought I could write a function, and then have it accessed through shared. For example;

Script where shared is defined;

local function test(name)
     print(name)
end
shared.testFunction = test

Another script;

testFunction = shared.testFunction
testFunction("MediocreMushroom") -- attempt to call nil value
shared.testFunction("MediocreMushroom") -- attempt to call nil value

I have tried a few different things; in the first script I’ve tried directly doing shared.testFunc(name) and then writing the body; I have also tried switching around how I connect the variables. I also tried comparing to what I’ve seen done with _G on other posts but it didn’t work and most posts only spoke about _G and not shared.

Thanks for any insight!

#2

ModuleScripts were made for essentially this purpose. You should think about using those instead of shared or _G to share things between scripts.

1 Like
#3

Again, I appreciate this but I very explicitly stated I was not interested in this answer but rather a solution to the shared function. Do you have any insight on that?

#4

What’s the need to use shared here? Is it just to mess around with it and figure it out? Because it should be the same thing as _G. They serve the same purpose.

#5

To point out _G variables (shared as well as they work the same way) have performance repercussions in your game, as @MrLonely1221 kindly mentioned in their post, use Module Scripts.

#6

For anyone in the future wondering, here is the format I used to get this to work. Not sure why I was having initial issues;

Script 1:

shared.testFunction = function(variable1, variable2)
print(variable1 .. variable2)
end

Script2:

local newString = shared.testFunction("Hello", "Goodbye")
print(newString) -- HelloGoodbye
#7

You can add a line

 repeat task.wait() until shared.testFunction

In the beginning of script 2. That should ensure that the data is loaded.

#8

Declaring the function in a local variables takes a few milliseconds. So the script 2 tries to read the value of shared.testFunction before it is written, thus you get nil.