Calling one digit of a variable [Sugarcube2]

Authoring Twine
1

Twine Version: Sugarcube2 (2.37.3)

Hello all, I’m trying to handle a problem I’m having with parsing variables. The Sugarcube2 documentation below seems to imply I can use brackets to read a single digit of a variable:

sugarcube2-variables
sugarcube2-variables1403×507 48.8 KB

However when actually testing it with something like this:

<<set $tester to 124567111>>

$tester
$tester[0]
$tester[4]

I expected to see the full variable for “tester”, then the 1st digit, then the 5th digit. But it doesn’t work, instead I get this:

124567111
$tester[0]
$tester[4]

It seems the documentation was talking about arrays instead. Does anyone know how to quickly call a digit of a variable?

2

The $varname[index] notation is only for accessing Array elements, though there is a legacy Javascript feature that also allows it to work for characters of a string.

What it does not do, is access individual digits of a number, and I don’t think there is a way to do that without converting it to a string first. $varname.toString()[4] would work, for example, but you’ll have to put it inside a <<print>>.

e.g. <<print $tester.toString()[4]>> should give you “6”, as expected

3

Additional to @Hituro advice…

If you don’t intend to perform maths on the numerical value of that ($tester) variable, then this may be one case were using a String representation of a Number would be appropriate.

<<set $tester to "124567111">>

$tester
$tester[0]   => outputs 1
$tester[4]   => outputs 6
4

Interesting and possibly the fix for my use case (using 20 variables in place of 500 by using the digits). Is there a way to change a single digit in a string? I tried:

<<set $tester[4] to 8>>

But it tells me “Cannot assign to read only property ‘4’ of string ‘124567111’”

5

Actually I have an update after tinkering around and realizing that Hituro is right and at the end of the day, Twine is javascript with a hot makeover. So I looked for a javascript solution. It turns out you can keep it as a number and do this:

<<set $tester to 124567111>>

<<print $tester.toString().charAt(2)>>

And if you don’t want to print it and want to use it for if statements, you can do this:

<<if $tester.toString().charAt(2) eq 4>>
	Congratulations!
<</if>>
6

I take it from your reply that you are using this string of numbers as some sort of set of flags? To save on variables?

I’d point out that:

  1. There’s no real need to save on a small number of variables in this way
  2. You’d be much better advised to use a generic object to do this so that the flags can have sensible names
7

That is true, but I’m saving probably 1,000+ variables. I keep a lexicon of what number allocates to what event/dialogue in the past with a lot of characters. I feel like an extra 1,000 variables could certainly mess up my game’s loading.