Tables and parameters

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#1

Hey guys, I was recently reading a post on OOP(Object Oriented Programming) You can see it here for reference

[Concepts: Object Oriented Programming in Roblox]

I was reading and saw that he mentioned that when you add a Colon when calling a function from an inside constructor table, the table gets passed into the parameters, which allows changing a true/false value declared inside the table. what’s the difference between using a period and why does it not work with one? I find my biggest weakness in coding is understanding truly why things are the way they are.

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#2

Coding sometimes isn’t the way of understanding just knowing.

#3

Yeah, but why does it not work with a period? There is obviously something going on with how values are passed right?

#4

Wdym by values passed? typefor30characterrule

#5

Sorry, that was misleading. What I’m understanding from this is that when I call the function in the table using a colon, I’m essentially passing the table into the function , and if I use a period this would not work?

#6

Oh so your making a table and making functions with the table inside of them?

#7

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Yeah, I’m trying to understand how this whole thing works.

#8

That looks odd… Just send me the roblox studio version.

#9

You could check the article, I linked it in my post.

#10

Ight. Let me check it out! :smiley:

#11

: passes self or the table of the module automatically instead of needing to get it yourself

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#12

If you call a function using : the function itself must also be : otherwise parameters will be mixed and it will error

#13

As @kingschool9 mentioned, calling a function with : passes self which is a variable that redirects itself to the table that you called it from. Calling functions from a dot(.) directly indexes the function. It’s recommended to only use the colon when you need the self argument

Example:

local tbl = {} -- the main table
tbl.var1 = 0 -- first property
tbl.var2 = 9 -- second property

function tbl:_add() -- method
   return self.var1 + self.var2 -- uses "self" to index the table so you can access the properties of it
end

function tbl.add(arg1, arg2) -- function
   return arg1 + arg2 -- return "arg1 + arg2"
end

print(tbl:_add()) -- prints "9"
print(tbl.add(7, 8)) -- prints "15"
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#14

This is very helpful, may I ask what programmers usually mean by index?

#15

Index is usally when you do something like

local part = Instance.new("Part") -- create a new part
part.Name = "newPart" 
-- we accessed "Name" because the property's name is it's index or "key"

Or index can mean the directory to something

local workspace = workspace -- the workspace global
local part = workspace.Part -- the part
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