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I am creating a game in love2d (LuaJIT) and I am creating a debug window for changing values at runtime. I was able to do that, however, I also now want to be able to call functions. For example, I traverse a table and there is a function in this table called "hello" which is written like this:

self.hello = function(str, num)
    print(string.format("%s: %d", str, num))
end

From the expression of type(object.hello) I only see function. If it had been a table, I could have traversed it and see the keys and values, but it is just a "function" and I have no idea how to properly call it, as I don't know what arguments does it take and how many. Is there a way to find this out at runtime in lua? Maybe this information is also stored in some table elsewhere?

VP.
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    Does this answer your question? [lua - get the list of parameter names of a function, from outside the function](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3097209/lua-get-the-list-of-parameter-names-of-a-function-from-outside-the-function) – Piglet Jun 16 '20 at 13:51
  • Is it possible to do that without the `debug` module? – VP. Jun 16 '20 at 14:23

1 Answers1

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it is just a "function" and I have no idea how to properly call it

Neither does Lua. As far as Lua is concerned, any Lua function can take any number of parameters and return any number of parameters. These parameters could be of any type, as could its return values.

Lua itself does not store this information. Or at least, not in any way you could retrieve without doing some decompiling of its byte-code. And since you're using LuaJIT, that "decompiling" might require decompiling assembly.

Nicol Bolas
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