AceLibrary error - how?

Haleth · 02-29-12, 05:04 PM

Hello!

Quite a few times now I've seen people post a lua error in the comments of my Aurora addon, like this:

Code:

Date: 2012-02-29 20:14:09
ID: 1
Error occured in: Global
Count: 1
Message: ..\AddOns\Aurora\Aurora.lua line 1:
attempt to call global 'AceLibrary' (a nil value)
Debug:
[C]: AceLibrary()
Aurora\Aurora.lua:1: in main chunk

And I don't understand it, because Aurora doesn't use any libraries at all and makes no reference to Ace or whatever. Yet it's blaming line 1 in Aurora.lua. Line 1 is simply this:

Code:

local alpha = .5 -- controls the backdrop opacity (0 = invisible, 1 = solid)

Typically, it goes away after the user updates their addons or removes outdated ones. But I'm interested in how it is possible for this to happen at all.

Could anyone shed some light on this?

Dridzt · 02-29-12, 05:35 PM

Can't find an easy answer but according to Lua reference

Identifiers in Lua can be any string of letters, digits, and underscores, not beginning with a digit.

According to that, .5 could be a valid variable name since it doesn't start with a digit.

My best guess is some 'challenged' developer is leaking a global in their addon (not Aurora) named .5

You can try setting your alpha as the unabridged version 0.5 (which is not a valid variable name) and see if that helps.

This is conjecture btw, I don't have access to WoW atm to test if .5 or '.5' are valid variable names.
If they are and someone is doing .5 = AceLibrary in their addon it might explain the error since Aurora is probably one of the first addons to load for many users due to it's name.

Haleth · 02-29-12, 05:46 PM

Wow, I hadn't thought of it like that. It's an interesting thought, I'll check it out and report back.

Phanx · 02-29-12, 05:54 PM

The dot character (.) is invalid in a variable name, because it would normally indicate a table lookup in that context, eg. tableName.keyName.

**Seerah** · 02-29-12, 08:56 PM

One thing I notice is that your file is named aurora.lua yet that error references Aurora.lua...

Haleth · 03-01-12, 06:39 AM

I noticed that too. I didn't think much of it, but apparently, the problem is caused when people tried to update Aurora through the Curse Client, which then pulled a different addon altogether with the same name - I've never uploaded anything there.

Thanks for the replies, anyhow.

Torhal · 03-01-12, 07:21 AM

@Haleth: Could you tell me which AddOn is downloaded from the Curse Client? I'll see if I can't resolve the issue on the site.

Wimpface · 03-13-12, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by Torhal

@Haleth: Could you tell me which AddOn is downloaded from the Curse Client? I'll see if I can't resolve the issue on the site.

Probably this? I'm not sure if WoWAce and Curse are still linked.

EDIT: Holy necro, sorry guys!

Haleth · 03-13-12, 05:13 PM

Sorry for not replying, I tried to find it on Curse but I couldn't, then I asked the person who got the error but he didn't reply.

That was the one, indeed Wimpface.

Don't worry about the necro, it's not too old.

Vlad · 03-14-12, 08:02 AM

Keep in mind that 'local alpha = .5' the variable name is 'alpha' while '.5' is the value, hence variable naming conventions in this case are fine since 'alpha' is a valid variable name. 'local .5 = ...' or 'local 5 = ...' on the other hand would not work since '.' is a reserved char and can not be used for names, and '5' in the later example is a number and you can't set the value of a number to something else. :P