Check If A String Is Somewhere In A Table?

Hello, I'm making a program that requires a player to be "authorized" and I put all the authorized players within a table. After a player hits a player detector, I need to check if that player is within the table somewhere. Would it just be something like

if playername == authorizedplayers[] then
-- more important stuff later

? Or is there an easier way to do something with the same effect?

This is a very common question on these forums, and there are lots of answers to all of them, both from myself and others, as such, I'm not going do a big writeup here, why say something again when you can just point people to a place where you've already said it before.

Link #1
Link #2
Link #3

Maybe you can create a table with player names as KEYS, and the values will be… For example, passwords. Then, you can check for this player like that:
if authorizedplayers[playername] == nil then print("Incorrect username") return end
if authorizedplayers[playername] ~= pass then print("Wrong password") return end

0099, on 07 October 2013 - 11:50 PM said:

Maybe you can create a table with player names as KEYS, and the values will be… For example, passwords. Then, you can check for this player like that:
if authorizedplayers[playername] == nil then print("Incorrect username") return end
if authorizedplayers[playername] ~= pass then print("Wrong password") return end

Yes that method is the best way to do it, as detailed in all 3 of the links I provided in the reply above yours.
Also, a tip, use [code][/code] tags around code.
Lastly your == nil is not needed, doing if authorizedPlayers[playername] then will evaluate to true if there is a value, false if it is nil. Your second if statement can work without the first one too.

local players = {"Tjakka5", "person1", "person2"}

local input = read

for i = 1, #players do
  if input == players[i] then
     --do stuff
  end
end

That should also work.

Tjakka5, on 09 October 2013 - 05:19 AM said:

local players = {"Tjakka5", "person1", "person2"}
local input = read
for i = 1, #players do
  if input == players[i] then
	 --do stuff
  end
end

That should also work.

Actually it wouldn't, you have a bug, but if you didn't have the bug, it would be very inefficient compared to a lookup table especially when there is a large amount of data in the table.

lol, I love how bit's trying to keep himself from explaining everything over again. You would have to change your code to:

local players = {"Tjakka5", "person1", "person2"}

local input = read()    -- forgot parentheses

for i = 1, #players do
  if input == players[i] then
     --do stuff
  end
end

He's right. It would still be more efficient to do:

local players = {Tjakka5 = true, person1 = true, person2 = true}

if players[read()] then
     --do stuff
end