How exacyly do you get variables within a program with self?
Like in Java you have:
private int a
public void sa(int a) { this.a = a}
public void ga() { return this.a }
VB has 'ME' and C# has 'this' etc.
But whats the Lua equivalent of this? Is this in the right direction?
local a
function sa(a)
self.a = a
end
Answer
In lua, you dont have a specific class implementation but you can use a table to simulate it. To make things simpler, Lua gives you some "syntactic sugar":
To declare a class member you can use this full equivalent syntazes
function table.member(self,p1,p2)
end
or
function table:member(p1,p2)
end
or
table.member = function(self,p1,p2)
end
Now, comes the tricky part:
Invoking
table:member(1,2)
you get:
self=table,p1=1,p2=2
invoking
table.member(1,2)
you get:
self=1,p1=2,p2=nil
In other words, the : mimics a real class, while . resemble more to a static use.
The nice thing is you can mix these 2 styles so, for example:
table.member(othertable,1,2)
gives
self=othertable,p1=1,p2=2
In this way you can "borrow" method from other classes implementing multiple inheritance