"Unexpected Symbol near if" error

[Jam_Toad]

Howdy!! I am kinda brand new here and I just had a really quick question.

How come this code errors? I have used this same code in other engines/frameworks and it works fine.

Code: Select all

local foo = if true then "bar" else "hello world"

Is this not a valid short circuit in Love2D?

Thank you and have a good one!

[BrotSagtMist]

A shortcut for what?
And also, obviously your other engines use a different programming language, this code is utter gibberish.
But why it fails? You start an assignment and then open a block with a codeword leaving the assignment hanging in the air id say. Neither makes the if block any sense, "bar", like youre just throwing a string to the language without telling it what to do with it.
Youre probably looking for
local foo= true and "bar" or "hello"
That would be the common lua syntax.

[ReFreezed]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

This is what Lua sees, and what errors the code has:

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local foo =  -- Missing an expression after '='.
if true then
	"bar"  -- Invalid statement.
else
	"hello world"  -- Invalid statement.
end

In addition to BrotSagtMist's solution using and/or, see a relevant page on the lua-users wiki, and the "Ternary operators" section on this page.

[Jam_Toad]

A shortcut for what?
And also, obviously your other engines use a different programming language, this code is utter gibberish.
But why it fails? You start an assignment and then open a block with a codeword leaving the assignment hanging in the air id say. Neither makes the if block any sense, "bar", like youre just throwing a string to the language without telling it what to do with it.
Youre probably looking for
local foo= true and "bar" or "hello"
That would be the common lua syntax.

My apologies, Roblox lets me do it. I realize they use a custom version of Lua called Luau, they must have added the feature.

[NishiyamaPedro]

You can do it like this.

Code: Select all

local foo = true and "bar" or "hello world"

There are other ways to get the same result, if you are interested you can read here
http://lua-users.org/wiki/TernaryOperator