Question on Local Functions

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1

So i have been reading the “programming in lua first edition” and have been learning things on a deeper level.

When I do this:

local function unpack()
    --do stuff
end

unpack()

and then this

function unpack()
   -- do stuff
end

It doesn’t work and I have to make it local. The only conclusion that I came to was i wasn’t making it local to that script, therefore overwriting the global variable unpack(). However if i do x = 10 in one script, and in another i do print(x), it prints nil meaning that the global variable is only local to that script so it doesn’t make a difference if i put local or make it global. So why can’t I do this with the function scenario?

2

Functions are just variables and they behave the same as any other. Your code should work and I’m not sure why it wouldn’t. For what it’s worth though, unpack is a built-in function and you should avoid naming anything unpack to prevent confusion.

Local variables are specific to the scope they are declared in.

function test()
    a = 10
end
test()
print(a) --> 10

function test2()
    local b = 20
end
test2()
print(b) --> nil because b is local and so it can't be accessed from outside of test2.
1 Like
3

Oh i realised it had a red line underneath it and when i actually tested the code, it worked.
Edit: basically this post was a waste of time.