Why this error on love.event.quit() ?

[mr_happy]

In function love.keypressed() the first line is:

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if key == 'escape' then love.event.quit() end

If I close the game window using the escape key I get this:

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Error: main.lua:149: attempt to index a nil value
stack traceback:
	[string "boot.lua"]:637: in function '__index'
	main.lua:149: in function <main.lua:126>
	[string "boot.lua"]:503: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:493>

Line 149, which is a little further down love.keypressed(), is:

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local c = town[tY][tX]

The program (only about 300 lines) works as expected without error and If I close the window using the mouse, the program exits normally. So what's going on with love.event.quit()? Should I be doing some sort of clean up or exiting elsewhere? I'm using Zerobrane Studio on Linux 64 bit if that's relevant.

TIA

[Nixola]

Can you post the whole code?

[mr_happy]

Can you post the whole code?

I'd prefer not to at the moment as it contains the tiniest grain of an idea I'd like to keep to myself atm

I moved

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if key == 'escape' then love.event.quit() end

to the end of love.keypressed() but the result is exactly the same. I don't see how line 149 is being executed after the call to love.event.quit().

[mr_happy]

Right, I've found what causes the error but not why it only happens when exiting with the keyboard.

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function love.keypressed(key)
 
  if key == 'escape' then love.event.quit() end
 
  -- HERE'S THE PROBLEM:
  local tX, tY = 0, 0
  
  if key == "left" then
    tX = player.x - 1
    tY = player.y
  end
  if key == "right" then
    tX = player.x + 1
    tY = player.y
  end   
  if key == "up" then
    tX = player.x
    tY = player.y - 1
  end    
  if key == "down" then
    tX = player.x
    tY = player.y + 1
  end   

  local c = town[tY][tX]
  ...  

I was initialising tX, tY to zero which, if used to index the table, obviously causes an error. However that indexing of town{} only happens when exiting using the keyboard (and why??). If I initialise them to '1', the problem disappears. If I don't initialise them I still get the error only when exiting via 'esc'. I don't understand

[grump]

I don't see how line 149 is being executed after the call to love.event.quit().

love.event.quit() places a 'quit' event in the event queue. It does not terminate the program immediately. Use os.exit() for that.

[mr_happy]

I don't see how line 149 is being executed after the call to love.event.quit().

love.event.quit() places a 'quit' event in the event queue. It does not terminate the program immediately. Use os.exit() for that.

OK thanks. I thought it might be something to do with that but I thought it would most likely return immediately and proceed to pop off any other outstanding events rather than continue executing code in the current callback.
I suppose:

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if key == 'escape' then love.event.quit() return end

would do the same job as long as it appears before the table is indexed.

I notice that os.exit() also has a slightly different effect when exiting with keyboard :

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AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed

...which doesn't happen when closing the window. Some SDL thing perhaps...?

EDIT: I also wrapped the table access as I just realised it wouldn't work as desired if I pressed spurious keys (oops).

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function love.keypressed(key)
 
   if key == 'escape' then os.exit() end

  local tX, tY
  if key == "left" then
    tX = player.x - 1
    tY = player.y
  elseif key == "right" then
    tX = player.x + 1
    tY = player.y
  elseif key == "up" then
    tX = player.x
    tY = player.y - 1
  elseif key == "down" then
    tX = player.x
    tY = player.y + 1
  end   

  if tX then
    local c = town[tY][tX]
    ...
   

[grump]

I notice that os.exit() also has a slightly different effect when exiting with keyboard :

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AL lib: (EE) alc_cleanup: 1 device not closed

...which doesn't happen when closing the window. Some SDL thing perhaps...?

I get the same message in my projects. It's probably some cleanup task inside love that is not running when terminating with os.exit(). I don't know of any other way to quit immediately though. I don't think it has any ill side effects.

[pgimeno]

In most cases it will terminate immediately after you return.

I really prefer to see things finish gracefully.

[bartbes]

In this case the simple solution would be to return directly after posting the event, so just use

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if key == 'escape' then return love.event.quit() end