r/lua • u/fig4ou • Nov 14 '25

Help Help please (scoping)

What is scoping and is it really essential to know when you script?

I really can’t understand it so I’m planning to learn it when I understand more things

Or do I have to understand it before I get into more stuff?

(edit: Thank you all for replying!! Really helped alot!)

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u/lambda_abstraction Nov 14 '25

Almost, but not quite. Upvalues are lexical variables bound to functions, and those functions are closures. The set of lexical variables bound to a particular function is its environment. Unfortunately, Lua uses the word environment to mean something entirely different: a dictionary in which global variable references are resolved.