Am I Doing Arrays Wrong?

snowy-fox

For practice, I'm working on a mock command console system. My "game" has several "player characters" that all have the group pc and the variable label, which is just their proper name. They're spread around the "world" in different "maps," so they're distributed between a few different parent nodes.

Upon receiving the list players command, I want my console to print the labels of those player characters. I currently have this:

But, I have two problems: first, sort() doesn't sort the array alphabetically - in fact, it's sorting it semi-randomly. It's placing the same two first every time, then arranging the rest seemingly at random, with a different result every time I run the game.

Second, i = i.label isn't doing anything. My intention is to replace each entry in the array with a String - its label. But, each remains a Node reference. i = str(i.label) didn't work, either.

Here's what's getting printed:

What am I doing wrong, here?

RichNaoo

My guess is it's sorting based on object id or some hash of the object, to use the label property as sorting index use the Array.custom_sort(MyComparatorClass, "my_comparator") where you can specify the way the labels should be compared. See docs for more information.

i = i.label or i = str(i.label) results in i no longer being a reference to the object but being a direct reference to the label of i. In your code example this wouldn't result in anything. And on top of that it's possible that i.get("label") returns null if there is no property label in object i which would cause a nullpointer reference error in the else part of your if statement.

snowy-fox

@RichNaoo said: My guess is it's sorting based on object id or some hash of the object, to use the label property as sorting index use the Array.custom_sort(MyComparatorClass, "my_comparator") where you can specify the way the labels should be compared. See docs for more information.

i = i.label or i = str(i.label) results in i no longer being a reference to the object but being a direct reference to the label of i. In your code example this wouldn't result in anything. And on top of that it's possible that i.get("label") returns null if there is no property label in object i which would cause a nullpointer reference error in the else part of your if statement.

Thanks for your suggestions, Rich.

If I can successfully get an array of the nodes' labels, and put the sort() call after that, I shouldn't need to make a custom sort. As far as I understand it. So, that was my plan.

All I'm trying to do is just that: convert each entry in the array from a node reference to a string, which is contained in that node's label variable.

I understand the possibility for `i.get("label") to return null, but don't worry about that. The character script has that side covered, and this is just a li'l test anyway. Appreciate the thought, though.

--Hold on...

*Typey-type type*

Aaaaand I got it working.

It suddenly struck me as I was finishing up my response: I should just make another array and put the labels in that, instead.

Sorting it even works properly, 'cause all of its entries are simple strings.

Thanks again for the suggestions, either way! I think your "reference to the object, direct reference to the label" line kicked my brain in the right direction.

snowy-fox

If anyone has any suggestions on better ways of doing this, though, I'm all ears!

RichNaoo

@"Snowy Fox" said: If anyone has any suggestions on better ways of doing this, though, I'm all ears!

Not much left to boil down here! The rest is preference I think.