What's the difference between table:function() and table.function()?

[Weeabus]

I’m wondering if there’s any actual difference between the two or is it just aesthetics?

[nicemike40]

Which is better? module: or module

Dots for libraries, colons for objects. That’s the convention roblox uses for its functions, so I stick to it. No. The colon syntax is convenience only. Doing someTable:Method("hello") is the same as someTable.Method(someTable, "hello"). In the same way, function module.test(self) print(self) end Is literally the same as function module:test() print(self) end As in, lua adds another parameter automatically. You can define one and call the other, whatever.

[Weeabus]

So basically it’s just for aesthetic purposes, at least for most use cases

[Zohair_028 (Zohair)]

@Weeabus

So basically it’s just for aesthetic purposes

Not really when doing OOP it can make a difference, such as adding less code to your script.
This will help you I suppose

Create on Roblox

And there are similar posts on the forum regarding this you can check them out.

[Weeabus]

I’m messing with some OOP rn, and I’m fairly new to Roblox’s OOP. I’ve had experience with OOP with Unity and Java, but I’m just gonna stick to the colons.

[Zohair_028 (Zohair)]

In my last post, I forgot to add this one which is very helpful
This topic is based on self but the solution provides an understanding on the " : "

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 …

[Weeabus]

Is there anything similar to Java’s Abstract classes in Lua/Roblox?

[nicemike40]

As @Zohair_028 said (and I should’ve in retrospect), it can be useful for OOP when you want to access the instance rather than the class:

local MyClass = {}
MyClass.__index = MyClass

function MyClass.new(prop)
    return setmetatable({
        property = prop
    }, MyClass)
end

function MyClass:Print()
    -- self refers to the instance
    -- {property=...}, not MyClass
    print(self.property)
end

local a = MyClass.new("A")
local b = MyClass.new("B")

a:Print() --> A
b:Print() --> B

[Zohair_028 (Zohair)]

It has been only 5 months I have been doing scripting and I never really did any other language other than lua so I can’t give you an account on that
I have seen some classes in some other languages being created(c++ for example) and I can say oop in lua is quite different.

[Weeabus]

Alr. I’ve been scripting for a couple of years, and abstract classes are extremely helpful. They’re sort of like template classes you can use for other classes, which would help tremendously with inventories.