How do I pick a dictionary table from a Dictionary?
local Dict = {
Quote1 = {
Text = "What's up";
Color = BrickColor.new("Lime green").Color
};
Quote2 = {
Text = "yoooooo";
Color = BrickColor.new("Lapis").Color
}
}
while wait(1) do
math.randomseed(os.time())
local randomQuote = Dict[math.random(1, #Dict)] -- i get an error here
print(randomQuote)
end
error:
Players.creeperhunter76.PlayerScripts.command:21: bad argument #2 to 'random' (interval is empty)
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1 answer
As hiimgoodpack says, "#" doesn't work on dictionaries because it only counts array elements.
One option is to manually count the keys and select a random one based on that, like this function does:
function PickRandomKeyFromDict(d)
local n = 0
for _, _ in pairs(d) do
n = n + 1
end
n = n - math.random(1, n)
for k, _ in pairs(d) do
if n == 0 then return k end
n = n - 1
end
end
You could use it like this:
local quoteKey = PickRandomKeyFromDict(Dict) local quoteValue = Dict[quoteKey] --can now do quoteValue.Text and quoteValue.Color
However, you probably don't need quoteKey and could have all this work better as a list:
local quotes = {
{Text = "What's up", Color = BrickColor.new("Lime green").Color},
{Text = ""yoooooo", Color = BrickColor.new("Lapis").Color},
--etc
}
--Get random quote by doing:
local quote = quotes[math.random(1, #quotes)]
--can now do quote.Text and quote.Color
In either case, don't forget to initialize the randomseed at the top of your script: math.randomseed(tick()); math.random() (you need to skip the first math.random for superior results). You're only supposed to initialize the randomseed once, not multiple times in a loop. (There do exist reasons for initializing it multiple times, but in your case once is better so that you can get a new quote whenever you want and it will still seem random.)