How to self-reference table during initialization

Question

Is there a shorter way to do this:

local thisismytable = {
    non = sequitur
}
thisismytable.whatismytable = thisismytable

Any help would be appreciated. I don't want to re-create pre-existing functionality.

Try

Answer 1

No.

If you can stand the difference between these two expressions thisismytable:whatismytable() instead of thisismytable.whatismytable, you could do:

local thisismytable = {
    non = sequitur,
    whatismytable = function (self) return self end
}

Testing:

print(thisismytable)
print(thisismytable:whatismytable())

More usage:

print(thisismytable:whatismytable().non)

Quadrireme

Wow, that's actually kind of genius. Thank you. – Try

It's a possibility, but not that genius :/ : just sends the accessed table as first argument to called function - it's just a wrapper around your attempt with function overhead. – Ingrained

@Ingrained I agree. I'd just do it the straightforward way like in the question. – Quadrireme

@Ingrained Yeah, I decided to avoid the overhead, but still, as just kind of puzzle-solving, I thought it was pretty clever. – Try

Answer 2

You can't. I use a helper function.

local function ref(t)
  for k, v in next, t do
    if v == ref then t[k] = t end
  end
  return t
end

local root = ref{left=ref, right=ref}
assert(root.left == root)

Madalena