A little script for loading files

[Bunnybacon]

Hey guys!

I am relatively new at game development, so I am still trying to find a good workflow for making new games.
First of all, let me just say that this community is amazing. There is always someone who is willing to help on the IRC.

So I made a function that helps you load all your helper scripts:

Code: Select all

function grab(folder)
	--print("Opening " .. folder)
	files = love.filesystem.getDirectoryItems(folder)
	--print(folder .. " has " .. #files .. " files")
	for k, file in ipairs(files) do
		local path = folder.."/" .. string.sub(file, 0, -5)
		require(path)
		print("Loading ".. path)
	end
end

Love doesn't want the '.lua' extension when using the require function, so I make a substring that trims those off.
All you need to do to use it is:

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function love.load()
	grab("folder1")
	grab("folder2")
	grab("folder3")
end

It is a neat way of loading helper scripts. It only works if the folder only has a bunch of lua files. Let me know if anyone has a cleaner solution.

Have fun.

[s-ol]

a little improvement would be to use string:match instead of substr, if it doesn't match "^(.*)%.lua$" then don't require it. Also you shouldnt use slashes in require.
Another useful thing to have would be the return modules.
Here's what I would do:

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function grab(folder)
   local modules = {}
   files = love.filesystem.getDirectoryItems(folder)
   for k, file in ipairs(files) do
      file = file:match("^(.*)%.lua$")
      modules[file] = require(folder .. "." .. file)
   end
   return modules
end

[Bunnybacon]

So I guess with your edit, the 'path' variable is unnecessary?

[s-ol]

So I guess with your edit, the 'path' variable is unnecessary?

whoops, yes, missed that copy&pasting on my phone.

[Sirtycolt3]

I know this post is a bit old... But I'm just going to point ut a small thing lua does that caused a huge bug and headache for me.

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local A_Script = require("Scripts.World")
local B_Script = require("Scripts/World")
print(tostring(A_Script))  -- table: 0x500a450
print(tostring(B_Script))  -- table: 0x500d910
print(A_Script == B_Script) -- false!

They create two different objects for the same module (Lua should cache the result of require() so it should result in a reference to the same object no matter how many times you require it)

Just incase someone else has this seemingly illogical bug...

[zorg]

I know this post is a bit old... But I'm just going to point ut a small thing lua does that caused a huge bug and headache for me.

Code: Select all

local A_Script = require("Scripts.World")
local B_Script = require("Scripts/World")
print(tostring(A_Script))  -- table: 0x500a450
print(tostring(B_Script))  -- table: 0x500d910
print(A_Script == B_Script) -- false!

They create two different objects for the same module (Lua should cache the result of require() so it should result in a reference to the same object no matter how many times you require it)

Just incase someone else has this seemingly illogical bug...

It does cache it... based on the module name you give it, which in that case is not the same; this is also a reason why slashes shouldn't be used with require, and will throw errors in the next löve release.