Outputing as Nil even after being defined properly earlier in the program

[Stale]

the issue is that while making the heart system, I need individual ids for the nodes, this works in the first function and after printing the table, I know for sure the table is normal however im getting an error saying deadheart is nil, the id defined properly for sure

[Mathias_Westerdahl]

As you see in your first code, that variable is local. That means it’s only accessible to you inside that function.

Also, you are overwriting a lot of self.___ variables in that for loop.
That means you only store the values from the last loop.

[Stale]

Wow I never new that was a thing thank you

[Alex_8BitSkull]

I wrote a post on this subject a while back, the first half explains scoping:

Help turning block of code into function

Right, it does sound like you need to understand scoping in Lua. Read this section of the manual (in fact the whole page is useful). In simple terms, the “scope” of a variable (or function) in Lua has to do with where it is available (“blocks”). A block might be a function, or an entire script. Something with the prefix ‘local’ is available only in the block where it is defined. Without that prefix, it is global, and available everywhere. Using global variables can quickly get messy, and you r…