Using variables in local commands in a timer

Posted by Azcporian on Sun 21 Feb 2021 03:25 PM — 7 posts, 21,717 views.

Azcporian Sun 21 Feb 2021 03:25 PM #0

I currently have a timer set up to interact with a pet every 10 minutes. They recently added items expand how you do so that I would like to add to the timer. Currently I have the timer set up with:

local commands = { "train ", "play ", "pat " }

Send ( commands [ math.random (#commands) ] .. GetVariable("Pet") )

They added a ball, stuffed toy, and a frisbee. The commands I would need to use is "train @Pet with ball|toy|frisbee" but I the other two commands play and pat would need to remain the same. I tried changing the local commands to:

local commands = { "train (GetVariable("Pet") with frisbee", "play (GetVariable("Pet")", "pat (GetVariable("Pet")" }

But I would get the error:

Compile error
World: Primary
Immediate execution
[string "Timer: "]:1: '}' expected near 'Pet'

I'm not sure how I would go about changing the timer to accomplish this.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 21 Feb 2021 09:21 PM #1

How about:


local commands = { "train ", "play ", "pat " }
local toys = { "ball", "stuffed toy", "frisbee" }

Send ( commands [ math.random (#commands) ] .. GetVariable("Pet") 
       .. " with " .. toys [  math.random (#toys) ] )

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 21 Feb 2021 09:23 PM #2

Or, to do it your way:


 local commands = { "train " .. GetVariable("Pet") .. " with frisbee", 
                    "play " .. GetVariable("Pet"), 
                    "pat " .. GetVariable("Pet") }

Send ( commands [ math.random (#commands) ] )

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 21 Feb 2021 09:25 PM #3

And to vary the toys:



local toys = { "ball", "stuffed toy", "frisbee" }

local commands = { "train " .. GetVariable("Pet") .. " with " .. toys [ math.random (#toys) ] , 
                   "play " .. GetVariable("Pet"), 
                   "pat " .. GetVariable("Pet") }

Send ( commands [ math.random (#commands) ] )

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Sun 21 Feb 2021 09:27 PM #4

To make it neater:


local pet = GetVariable("Pet") 
local toys = { "ball", "stuffed toy", "frisbee" }

local commands = { "train " .. pet .. " with " .. toys [ math.random (#toys) ] , 
                   "play " .. pet, 
                   "pat " .. pet }

Send ( commands [ math.random (#commands) ] )

Azcporian Mon 22 Feb 2021 05:05 AM #5

Thank you so much.

To be honest I never really knew what the .. before GetVariable did, so I never thought putting them after it would fix the problem.

Nick Gammon Australia Forum Administrator Mon 22 Feb 2021 05:07 AM #6

In Lua .. just concatenates strings.