I never understood
for i, v in next(Table) do
print(v)
end
✓ ANSWER ACCEPTED
What does for i,v in NEXT do? And what can it be used for
2 answers
✓ Accepted answer
Iterators
next is a stateless iterator with the signature next(table[, key]) -> key2, value. It's also what is produced by pairs, which is in essence
function pairs(t)
return next, t
end
It takes a table and an optional key and produces the 'next' key/value pair in the table, the first pair if you don't supply the optional key, or nil if there's no next key
So how do iterators work?
When you use a for ... in ... do-style loop, the real format of it is
for nextArg, ... in iteratorFunction[, iteratorConstant[, initialArg]] do
And all missing optional inputs become nil. At the start of the iteration, it calls iteratorFunction(iteratorConstant, initialArg), with the returns becoming variables for the loop. Every further iteration it calls iteratorFunction(iteratorConstant, nextArg) until nextArg is nil.
As an aside, your example is not really a correct use of next
It is something called an "Iterator", basically it cycles through a list (the table), to find certain things or get certain contents of it. It is useful for player inventories and things that involve a list of items.
Iterators are usually like
for i=1, 10 do
or just like you said,
for i, v in next(Table) do
print(v)
end
or (this one is perfect for getting the children of a model and changing its properties)
for name, child in pairs(model:GetChildren()) do -- Looping through all of the children
if child:IsA("BasePart") then -- Checking if it's a part
child.BrickColor = BrickColor.Red() -- Setting it to red
child.Transparency = 0.2 -- Transparency
end
end)
I hope this explanation helps.
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