What does "self" do?

[TheNamesLua]

you shouldn’t be defining self as a variable, it is automatically passed. For example:

local object = {
	Message = "Hi!"
}

function object:SayMessage()
	print(self.Message)
end

object:SayMessage()

[dudezwithattitudez (drkre)]

What are you trying to prove sir?

[griffeyiscool (Ultimate Dimer)]

In order to print a table you could do this:

local mytable = {'red', 'blue'}

local together = ''

for i, data in pairs(mytable) do
    together = together.. mytable[i] .. ', '
end)

together = '{' .. together .. '}'

or horizon/vertical coding.

[dudezwithattitudez (drkre)]

I mean yeah it works, but it throws an error at ya’.

[TheNamesLua]

yes because modules have to return something. My code was a very very basic example of how self works.

[TheNamesLua]

why wouldn’t you just print the table

[dudezwithattitudez (drkre)]

Fair enough. I also just found this link that pretty much can explain what "self" is.

What is self and how can I use it?

You can write your topic however you want, but you need to answer these questions: What do you want to achieve? Keep it simple and clear! I would like to make a character controller of @EgoMoose se What is the issue? Include screenshots / videos if possible! I don’t know what self is. What solutions have you tried so far? Did you look for solutions on the Developer Hub? I don’t find a post that read about self. I don’t want you to write a whole code, but a simple example would be …

[tlr22 (FusionOak)]

Well. Self is a reference to what the function was called on. It’s a bit hard to explain so let’s take an example

local t

t = {}
t.number = 5
function t.addNumber(table, n)
    table.number = table.number + n
    print(table.number)
end

So here we have a table t that has a number and the function addNumber. AddNumber expects to get a table like t as the input so it can add to table.number. Well we have t. Let’s just throw t into that function.

t.addNumber(t, 5)

And now it should change t.number to 10 and print it. But, it’s kind of annoying to have to type t in as the first parameter. So instead let’s use colon notation. This line is exactly the same as what we just did above.

t:addNumber(5)

Colon basically just passes the thing it’s called on as the first value.

Now let’s rewrite the addNumber function to use colon notation. Or Better yet, I’ll change the “table” parameter to self, then right colon notation underneath.

function t.addNumber(self, n)
    self.number = self.number + n
    print(self.number)
end

function t:addNumber(n)
    self.number = self.number + n
    print(self.number)
end

So these 2 functions are identical. : when declaring a function just secretly passes in self as a parameter so you don’t have to do it with dot notation.

[remcodesremcodes (Yix)]

this guy taught me self in one post while you guys kept arguing

[ExercitusMortem (Exercitus)]

That’s because they’re all … selfish
Badumtss