Table.insert inserts changes all element's values(SOLVED)

Questions
1

Hello everyone,
Just a strange thing happened today. While registering my racers using

local function register_racer(self, id)
	self.new_racer = racer
	self.new_racer.my_id = id
	self.new_racer.pos = go.get_position(id)
	self.new_racer.position = #racers + 1
	pprint(self.new_racer)
	table.insert(racers,#racers +1, self.new_racer)
	pprint(racers)
end

I get some thing totally off - Every value in the table is changed, have a look here(There are just continuous output)

Screenshot%20(60)
Screenshot%20(60)1366×660 31.6 KB
Screenshot%20(61)
Screenshot%20(61)1366×768 35.1 KB

Any ideas about what is happening here?
Thanks in advance

2

What is racer that you are assigning to self.new_racer?
What I can tell you are assigning the same table to self.new_racer, altering that tables element somewhat and then inserting it in the table.
As it is a reference to the same table, all fields in the indexed table will be altered and get the last values.

4 Likes
3

The racer table is

local racer = {
position = 0,
id = hash(""), -- just a placeholder for go's id 
}

Looks like what you mentioned is correct, so initializing self.new_racer to an empty table will do the trick, isn’t it?

4

Yes as long as you are not reusing the table. In this case there are no need creating the racer object beforehand as both the position is wrong type (not a vector3) and not used and same thing with the id which you are overwriting them both.
If you are not using self.new_racer anywhere else as explicit the last racer that was registered then you could easily do with:

local function register_racer(self, id)
  table.insert(racers, {
    my_id = id,
    pos = go.get_position(id),
    position = #racers + 1
  })
end

Also you can skip the #racers + 1 in the insert command as it will be added to the end of the table if not defined otherwise. Good luck!

5

Oh yes!! It’s working now. Thanks a ton @andreas.strangequest

1 Like