Lua Labs • Re: wml.get_child for unit

So does that mean any changes I make are "stored" immediately? I thought I had to "unstore" the unit (e.g to_map).

Nope, __cfg can be thought of as a WML copy of the unit.

I've always thought of .__cfg as being akin to storing the unit.

It is exactly the same apart from not going into a WML variable.

But in WML, I store a unit to a variable, which is then just a WML variable and I can do whatever I want with it (or not). And I suppose I could store it to multiple variables, each independent of the others. Short of doing a by-value copy, I don't think I can do this in lua (this is a rather silly example that can help me understand, not something I can see myself doing).

Sure you can. Access __cfg twice and now you have two independent WML copies of the unit.

My immediate confusion likes with "It'll serialize every time you access it". Seems like that would mean if I made a change the next time I accessed .__cfg my change would be overwritten by the serialized data from the unit. Unless behind the scenes there are actually two copies of the unit, the "real" one and the ".__cfg" one and I'm getting a serialized version of the latter. Then "unstoring" would be syncing the real one from the "working copy".

I don't really get your confusion or how you drew any of these conclusions. Every time you access unit.__cfg, the game serializes that unit to WML and returns the result. If you access __cfg twice in a row, you'll end up with two identical but independent WML tables. If you access __cfg, make some change to the unit directly, and access __cfg again, the first WML table reflects the state of the unit before the change and the second WML table reflects the state of the unit after the change.

Are you saying there is a difference in serialization cost between:

Code:

local unit = wesnoth.units.find_on_map(cfg)[1]unit.__cfg.hitpoints=23unit.__cfg.language_name=_"Uncle Bob"unit.__cfg.experience=100

and

Code:

local unit = wesnoth.units.find_on_map(cfg)[1].__cfgunit.hitpoints=23unit.language_name=_"Uncle Bob"unit.experience=100

There is, and also the first version results in no change to the unit, since you're only modifying the temporary WML table that was created when you accessed __cfg. The second version doesn't serialize anything. It directly modifies the unit.

Statistics: Posted by Celtic_Minstrel — Today, 5:38 pm

---