Question

What’s wrong with this lua code, my argument is never converted to a number or recognized as a number no matter what I type?

I tried “distance = tonumber(arg[0]) or 0” as well.

--Args

local args = {...}

--Variables

local distance = 0
if #args > 0 and type(args[0])=="string" then args[0] = tonumber(args[0]) end
if #args > 0 and type(args[0])=="number" then distance = args[0] end
print("Distance: "..distance)

Answer 1

Lua uses 1-based indices for its arrays. args[0] is nil, and therefore has the type "nil".

By the way, this condition is entirely unnecessary. tonumber will check to see if its argument is a number and simply return it if needed. It will return nil if the argument cannot be converted to a number. So just use:

distance = tonumber(args[1])

You don’t even need to check the length of args; if no arguments were provided, it will be nil, and tonumber will return nil. Thus, just check to see if distance is nil.