Bandicoot802's Apis

The first (and only as of now) Api that I have is to automatically detect any monitors on any side and assign the 'mon' variable to them eg. mon.write() .

If you have a custom api you would like post here or send me a pm and i'll see what I can do.

The paste bin is http://pastebin.com/SEW4jmmR

This could be made much better:

mSides = {}
mSides[1] = "top"
mSides[2] = "bottom"
mSides[3] = "front"
mSides[4] = "back"
mSides[5] = "right"
mSides[6] = "left"
for ms = 1, 6 do
if peripheral.getType(mSides[ms]) == "monitor"  then
  mon = peripheral.wrap(mSides[ms])
  print("Monitor detected on"..mSides[ms].."")
  break
end
end

sjele, on 06 September 2012 - 02:02 PM said:

This could be made much better:

mSides = {}
mSides[1] = "top"
mSides[2] = "bottom"
mSides[3] = "front"
mSides[4] = "back"
mSides[5] = "right"
mSides[6] = "left"
for ms = 1, 6 do
if peripheral.getType(mSides[ms]) == "monitor"  then
  mon = peripheral.wrap(mSides[ms])
  print("Monitor detected on"..mSides[ms].."")
  break
end
end

Thnaks I didn't think about putting the sides into an array and then looping it. I'm still not very familiar with lua.

edit : I copied this code over my original I gave you credit but if you want me to take it down tell me.

Feel free to use it. :D/>/>

Or better yet,

for _,side in ipairs(rs.getSides()) do
	if peripheral.getType(side) == "monitor" then
		mon = peripheral.wrap(side)
		break
	end
end

Though, if it's actually going to be used as an API, this would be the way to use it:

function getMonitor()
	local mon = nil
	for _,side in ipairs(rs.getSides()) do
		if peripheral.getType(side) == "monitor" then
			mon = peripheral.wrap(side)
			break
		end
	end
	return mon
end

Then you'd call it like so:

mon = apiName.getMonitor()

Edit to add ipairs() to for loops.

Lyqyd, on 09 September 2012 - 03:49 AM said:

Or better yet,

for _,side in rs.getSides() do
	if peripheral.getType(side) == "monitor" then
		mon = peripheral.wrap(side)
		break
	end
end

Though, if it's actually going to be used as an API, this would be the way to use it:

function getMonitor()
	local mon = nil
	for _,side in rs.getSides() do
		if peripheral.getType(side) == "monitor" then
			mon = peripheral.wrap(side)
			break
		end
	end
	return mon
end

Then you'd call it like so:

mon = apiName.getMonitor()

What does the _,side do?

rs.getSides() can be used to iterate through all six correctly-named sides of the computer. It returns an index (which we don't want, so we just use an underscore, which is a convention in lua for thrown-away return values) and a string that is the name of the side. This means that each iteration of the for loop has a different side in the variable 'side'.

Even shorter:

function getMonitor()
    for _,s in rs.getSides() do if peripheral.getType(s) == "monitor" then break end end return s
end

This will return a side, though

Yours is eight lines, if you break it out. Anything can be made into a one-liner; however, it makes no sense to do so just for the sake of shorter. Yours also always returns nil. My function above returns nil only if no monitors were found.

Also, we both forgot to call ipairs() on the result of rs.getSides().

thesbros, on 12 September 2012 - 04:15 AM said:

Even shorter:

function getMonitor()
    for _,s in rs.getSides() do if peripheral.getType(s) == "monitor" then break end end return s
end

This will return a side, though

As Lyqyd said, this doesn't work. The 's' variable only exists inside the for loop; when the loop finishes, 's' falls out of scope and you end up returning nil instead.