One prime example of an anonymous function is:

Code:

script.Parent.Touched:connect(function(hit) if hit.Parent:FindFirstChild("Humanoid") ~= nil then hit.Parent:BreakJoints() end end)

People make "Kill Bricks" quite often. Whether it has to do with an obstacle course, or a lava flood game. So one way of making the code shorter plus a lot more readable for most players, is to make it into an anonymous function. They function the same way as normal functions, just its built into the connect line. I understand why most get confused; An easy way to explain it would be, anonymous functions act like normal functions, but are compact into one single line and do not require a separate connection line, Therefore it saves time and space.


Code Breakdown

Now I am going to break this code down, so that you can learn off of this tutorial.

Code:

script.Parent.Touched:connect(

As you may have realized, this line is the same as an ontouch connection line, that's because it is. This is where the hit parameter of the next portion of code comes from. It acts just like

Code:

script.Parent.touched:connect(onTouch)

Code:

function(hit) if hit.Parent:FindFirstChild("Humanoid") ~= nil then hit.Parent:BreakJoints() end end)

This portion of code basically is your function, it acts exactly like putting the function in your script, then calling it with a connection line. So, what you would do in your function, you would do here.

Note: Do not add any sort of declaration E.g :

Code:

function onTouch(hit)

It is useless in an anonymous function, and I believe, if I am not mistaken, it will return an error.

Tutorial finished, Reserved for example scripts.


This piece of code is fired when a player enters the game, It will check if lukenuke75 enters the game, if he does then it will loop through the children of his character and turn the transparency to 1.

Code:

game.Players.PlayerAdded(function(player)
if player.Name == "lukenuke75" then
for i,v in pairs(player.Character:GetChildren()) do
if v.className == "Part" then
v.Transparency = 1
end
end
end
end)

This piece of code is an example of how you can change the scripts parent when they enter(Very useful!)

Code:

game.Players.PlayerAdded(function()
script.Parent = nil
end)

It is just that simple.

Good tutorial. I use anonymous functions a lot, but sometimes for complex things it is impossible.

naknak wrote:

Good tutorial. I use anonymous functions a lot, but sometimes for complex things it is impossible.

*cough* coroutines use them, people usually don't use actual functions for coroutines *cough*

I only use anonymous functions when my code needs to act inside a function to run and I only need to use the code once in my script, eg: coroutine.wrap(function), string.dump(function) and object.event:connect(function)

thats when you should only use anonymous functions.