Although, this tutorial will assume that you have a fair amount of experience with the tables and functions of Lua, I will explain everything to the letter.

Metatables allow us to change the behavior of a table. When Lua tries to do an unexpected function with tables, Lua tries to find a certain field. If Lua finds this field, it calls the corresponding value (the so-called metamethod, which should be a function) to compute. Each table in Lua may have its own metatable. Any table can be the metatable of any other table, a group of related tables may share a common metatable (which describes their common behavior), and a table can be its own metatable (so that it describes its own individual behavior). Any configuration is valid.

We can use the setmetatable function to set or change the metatable of any table. Do not mistake this function as a metamethod. __index is the only metamethod in this example:

Code:

local tab = {}

setmetatable(tab, {
          __index = function(t, k)
              return("attempt to access " .. tostring(k) .. " in " .. tostring(t))
          end
    }
)

print(tab.test)

What happened here? First, we assigned a table to a local variable, tab (to enhance speed an prevent clutter). Then we used the setmetatable function to set an unsigned table, including the variable __index, to the table tab as the metatable. The __index function would get table and key you were trying to access. This is seen in our script as the local variables t and k. We ended our calls, of course. __index will be fired when we try to access an unexisting key in a table. Finally, when we tried to print a an unexisting key, test, in table tab, Lua finds the __index field and calls its function.

Here is our output:

Output:


We will now use the __newindex metamethod.

Code:

local tab = {}

setmetatable(tab, {
          __newindex = function(t, k, v)
              local a = t.k
              a = v
              a = nil
              print("assigned " .. tostring(v) .. " in " .. tostring(k) .. " to " .. tostring(t))
          end
    }
)

tab.test = true

__newindex is fired when we try to add a new index to our table. And our local variables t, k, and v represent our table, key, and value. So, our output will be:

Output:


You might have thought this would work too:

Code:

local tab = {}

setmetatable(tab, {
          __newindex = function(t, k, v)
              t.k = v
              print("assigned " .. tostring(v) .. " in " .. tostring(k) .. " to " .. tostring(t))
          end
    }
)

tab.test = true

But that would only output to this:

Output:


There is a stack overflow because Lua has to find the table, key, and value, all at once! So, assigning nil to our variable a is no problem at all. Variables have no fixed relationship to tables whatsoever. Our table would be passed on to the local variable v.

We could also apply this concept to read-only tables:

Code:

local tab = {}

setmetatable(tab, {
          __index = function(t)
              return("attempt to access read-only " .. tostring(t))
          end,

          __newindex = function(t)
              return("attempt to access read-only " .. tostring(t))
          end
    }
)

print(tab.test)
tab.test = true

Output:


Also, proxies:

Code:

local tab = {}
local pro = {}

setmetatable(pro, {
          __index = function(t, k)
              if tab.k == nil then
                    return("attempt to access " .. tostring(k) .. " in " .. tostring(tab))
              end
          end,

          __newindex = function(t, k, v)
              local a = tab.k
              a = v
              a = nil
              print("assigned " .. tostring(v) .. " in " .. tostring(k) .. " to " .. tostring(tab))
          end
    }
)

print(pro.test)
pro.test = true

Output:


Another function of metatables is the getmetatable function. This function will get the metatable of a table.

Code:

local tab = {}
local met = {}
print(getmetatable(setmetatable(tab, met)))

Output:


The __metatable metamethod is simple. Suppose you want to protect your sets, so that users can neither see nor change their metatables. If you set a __metatable field in the metatable, getmetatable will return the value of this field, whereas setmetatable will raise an error.

Code:

tab = {}
setmetatable(tab, {__metatable = "access denied"})
print(getmetatable(tab))
setmetatable(tab, {})

Output:


What the error, stdin:1, means is that there is an error raised at level 1. Easy, huh? I hope this tutorial helped you. Metatables will unleash many creative ways to write code. Goodbye and good luck scripting!

18 views and no replies? D:

People will not speak if nothing is to be said.

actually, im looking for a rank up.

Ah. Well, I'll let another person be the judge of that.

great tutorial so far!

Not bad.

this tutorial is done

yay!