UnityScript nested Hashtables throw an error

Unity Engine
1

Hi,

The following code gives me the error ‘Object’ does not support slicing :

var ships : Hashtable=new Hashtable();

ships[‘Fighter’]=new Hashtable();
ships[‘Shark’]=new Hashtable();

ships[‘Fighter’][‘Power’]=2;
ships[‘Fighter’][‘Health’]=100;

ships[‘Shark’][‘Power’]=3;
ships[‘Shark’][‘Health’]=85;

How exactly do I make proper “multidimensional arrays” work in UnityScript? I come from web development so having problems with such simple task is quiet new to me.

I found a way where you have to declare evey hashtable as hashtable inline when reading the values, but is there really no CLEAN way of creating deep key+value arrays?

var ships = {‘Test’ : {‘Test1’ : ‘Test’}};

// This works but is not clean at all
print((this.ships[‘Test’] as Hashtable)[‘Test1’]);

Yes, removing #pragma strict fixes this, but again, not a clean way of doing things.

Thanks for any help!

2

I don’t know the exact syntax of UnityScript. But I can answer for C#:

The most common Data type for key-value types are Dictionaries. Since C# (and UnityScript also I think) is type safe language, you have to define which types you want to store as key / value. (there are some non-typed dictionaries as well like Hashtable but you should use them only if you really have different types as keys / values).

here is how you define a dictionary:

Dictionary<string, int> myDictionary = new Dictionary<string, int>();

you want nested dictionaries:

Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, int>> ships = new Dictionary<string, Dictionary<string, int>>();
ships["Fighter"] = new Dictionary<string, int>();
ships["Shark"] = new Dictionary<string, int>();

ships["Fighter"]["Power"] = 2;
ships["Fighter"]["Health"] = 100;

ships["Shark"]["Power"] = 3;
ships["Shark"]["Health"] = 85;

PS: In your case it would be better to use an own class for Ship and store it as a Dictionary<string, Ship>
PPS: Instead of strings as identifiers it is always a good idea to use Enums instead. You cannot make mistakes so easily if you use enums.

2 Likes
3

Well that’s C# so that does not help me much.

Why is UnityScript boycoting JavaScript’s native objects?

var ships = {};

ships[‘Fighter’] = {};
ships[‘Shark’] = {};

ships[‘Fighter’][‘Power’]=2;
ships[‘Fighter’][‘Health’]=100;

ships[‘Shark’][‘Power’]=3;
ships[‘Shark’][‘Health’]=85;

This is a normal JS functional code but does not work in Unity, why?

4

Because Unity doesn’t use Javascript.

5

by the way: C# is much cleaner in my opinion than UnityScript. Also much more people are using it. And another benefit: you can do more with it than writing scripts for Unity.

So I recommend to learn C# instead of UnityScript. It is a beautiful language.

6

Or you could just continue using Unityscript, and use nested Dictionaries.

var ships = new Dictionary.< String, Dictionary.<String, int> >();

Don’t use any untyped collections, such as Hashtable, ArrayList, or JS arrays. Always use typed collections such as Dictionary, List, and array[ ]. And yes, it would be better to make a Ship class instead, and use enums rather than strings.

–Eric