Local variables, functions and scope

Hey guys,

I've got a couple of pretty naive and basic questions about Lua scripting in DCS. As it stands, I'm loading a Lua script named missionConfig.lua that defines some mission-specific constants. I then have a script named aircraftSpawner.lua that spawns flights of aircraft based on the constants defined in the missionConfig.lua.

For the sake of the discussion, one of the missionConfig.lua constants that is referenced by aircraftSpawner.lua is a string named alertLevel.

So the questions/issues I have are:

1. The alertLevel constant in missionConfig.lua is defined as local alertLevel = "HIGH", but I can still access it in aircraftSpawner.lua with trigger.action.outText(alertLevel, 5, false). It seems wrong to me that I can reference a local variable from one script in a different script. What am I missing?

2. I'd like to use a C#-like Get method/function in the missionConfig.lua (e.g. function getAlertLevel() return alertLevel end), but I can't figure out how to create that type of static method and make it accessible to the aircraftSpawner.lua

Any help or advice on these two issues would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

1. The alertLevel constant in missionConfig.lua is defined as local alertLevel = "HIGH", but I can still access it in aircraftSpawner.lua with trigger.action.outText(alertLevel, 5, false). It seems wrong to me that I can reference a local variable from one script in a different script. What am I missing?

That's weird :huh:

2. I'd like to use a C#-like Get method/function in the missionConfig.lua (e.g. function getAlertLevel() return alertLevel end), but I can't figure out how to create that type of static method and make it accessible to the aircraftSpawner.lua

I think it's just a matter of including this in missionConfig.lua

local alertLevel = "HIGH"

function getAlertLevel() 

  return alertLevel 
end

As long as missionConfig.lua is loaded in the mission, I think you should be able to call getAlertLevel() from any other script and get the string value as return

getAlertLevel()

I don't see why it shouldn't work... as I understand it, this is what frameworks like MIST and MOOSE do all the time.

Thanks Hardcard.

Turns out I was falling foul of the old "ME-not-updating-the-script-files" issue. My scripts were actually right, but it was consistently running outdated versions. It was driving me insane.

Thanks for your help.:thumbup:

FYI for testing you can do an assert loadfile in lua and point it at the script with escaped slashes to speed up the development process.