Can an array be a "value" in a Key-Value pair/hashtable?

Question

I've been tearing my hair out for a week now trying to build a dialogue system where all of the lines of a particular interaction are held within an array, and trying to make that array be a value in a Hashtable where the key is just a simple concatenation of two strings that can be grabbed from the scene. But I keep running into trouble when I build the hashtable, where I can assign the arrays as values, but when I use the key, it returns nothing. And workarounds either pass casting issues, slicing issues or "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object." I know this is a complicated explanation, and the problem was getting overwhelming, so I built a really simple setup to try and sort out the problem. I have two scripts in this test.

_TestScriptA:

 var otherScript: _TestScriptB;
 var Box1 : GameObject;
 var Box2 : GameObject;
 var hash : Hashtable;
 
 function Start () {
     Box1 = GameObject.Find("GUI Text 1");
     Box2 = GameObject.Find("GUI Text 2");
     otherScript = GameObject.Find("Main Camera").GetComponent("_TestScriptB");
     hash = otherScript.hash;
 }
 
 function Update () {
     if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Q)){
         var x: Array = hash["poop"];
         Box1.guiText.text = x[0];
     }
 }

_TestScriptB:

 var poop: Array;
 var poop2: Array;
 var hash: Hashtable;
 
 function Start () {
     poop = new Array("1","2","3","4");
     poop2 = new Array("7","8","9","0");
     hash = new Hashtable();
     hash["poop"] = poop;
     hash["poop2"] = poop2;
 }

I know it's gotten a little messy, I've tried several iterations to try and resolve the problem. Tried to cut out anything that wasn't relevant. Hopefully what I'm attempting is clear here: When you push "Q," the Gui Text of Box1 should become the string "1."

Any help is appreciated! Using Unityscript, in case that's not clear.

Answer 1

In the Start() function of _TestScriptA, it tries to access the "hash" of _TestScriptB, but the "hash" of _TestScriptB is initialized in Start() also.

So if the Start() function of _TestScriptA is executed first, then it will get null for the "hash" of _TestScriptB.

You can solve the problem by changing of Start() of _TestScriptB to Awake(), or you can change the execution order of the scripts at Edit->Project Settings->Script Execution Order.

Here is the modified _TestScriptA:

 #pragma strict
 
 var otherScript: _TestScriptB;
 var Box1 : GameObject;
 var Box2 : GameObject;
 var hash : Hashtable;
  
 function Start () {
     Box1 = GameObject.Find("GUI Text 1");
     Box2 = GameObject.Find("GUI Text 2");
     otherScript = GameObject.Find("Main Camera").GetComponent.<_TestScriptB>();
     hash = otherScript.hash;
 }
  
 function Update () {
     if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Q)){
      var x: Array = hash["poop"] as Array;
      Box1.guiText.text = x[0] as String;
     }
 }

Here is the modified _TestScriptB:

 #pragma strict
 
 var poop: Array;
 var poop2: Array;
 var hash: Hashtable;
 
 function Awake () {
     poop = new Array("1","2","3","4");
     poop2 = new Array("7","8","9","0");
     hash = new Hashtable();
     hash["poop"] = poop;
     hash["poop2"] = poop2;
 }

Can an array be a "value" in a Key-Value pair/hashtable?

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