Storing players in a table

Help and Feedback Code Review
#1

I have this table

playersInRoundList = {}

and I store player names that are in the round as keys, so it will look like this mid-game

playersInRoundList = {["Soflowsen"] = true, ["Octopus"] = true}

Then when I need to get the player by name, I iterate through GetPlayers() and if the name of the player there is equal to the one in the table, then I use the player whose name that is.

I think it’s inefficient, but I don’t want to change it to using whole players as keys, because in most other languages (especially compiled), you would be unable to use objects (or arrays/tables) as indexes.

I was thinking of maybe making the players be values, so something like

playersInRoundList = {Soflowsen, Octopus}

but then I won’t be able to get players from list by key

playersInRoundList[Soflowsen]

How should I do that?

#2

couldn’t you just do

if playersInRoundList[PlayerName] then
end

or am I misunderstanding on what you are trying to do

#3

Right now, playersInRoundList contains names, not players, like this.

edit: I’m trying to find the best way to store players in a table, and I don’t want to store the player as a key, because most other languages can’t do that, and only support arrays, where the key can only be an index.

#4

Not sure why you wouldn’t want to use player objects as keys, but if you insist then you should be using User Id’s to store the players.
Then, as @D0RYU said, you can do

if playersInRoundList[Player.UserId] then
end
#5

just because roblox doesn’t use camelCase doesn’t mean you can’t use it

who cares

#6

Lua has some built-in table functions that I’m pretty sure can solve your issue

-- modulescript
local Players = game:GetService("Players")

local RoundModule = {PlayersInRound = {}}

function RoundModule:Reset()
	table.clear(self.PlayersInRound)
end

function RoundModule:Start()
	RoundModule:Reset()
	for _, Player in pairs(Players:GetPlayers()) do
		table.insert(self.PlayersInRound, Player.Name)
	end
end

function RoundModule:CheckForPlayer(PlayerName : string): (boolean, number | any)
	local index = table.find(self.PlayersInRound, PlayerName)
	return index ~= nil, index
end

function RoundModule:RemovePlayer(PlayerName : string)
	local IsInRound, Index = RoundModule:CheckForPlayer(PlayerName)
	if IsInRound == true then
		table.remove(self.PlayersInRound,Index)
	end
end

return RoundModule
#7

Would using objects as keys make it slower?

Are objects pointers? If so, then I think it wouldn’t

#8

Maybe, but it probably won’t matter. Whatever task you’re doing is going to be much more expensive than indexing the player.

#9

Using table.find versus indexing the table directly has a negligible if not no difference in work time. The only difference is that table.find is trying to find a key in the specified table and returns the index if it’s found.