Inconsistent data types in Itemstack

[forsakenquantum]

The awards mod has a register_on_craft which receives an itemstack object. In general, it appears that type(itemstack)=="userdata", however, in some cases it looks like type(itemstack)=="table". Specifically, if I make a mese pickaxe and add a couple of cavorite handles, as long as the mese pickaxe has never been used, then type(itemstack)=="userdata" and when the awards mod calls itemstack:get_name(), everything is fine. But if the mese pickaxe has been used, then type(itemstack)=="table" and trying to call itemstack:get_name() crashes the server.

I can work around this by detecting when type(itemstack)=="table" and then callling itemstack["name"] to get the name instead of itemstack:get_name(), but I feel like this isn't optimal

[TeTpaAka]

This is intended (see http:https://dev.minetest.net/ItemStack). You could also use a string as an itemstack.
If you want to have a consistent interface, you can always call
ItemStack(itemstack or itemstring or table or nil)
to get a userdata object.

[paramat]

Perhaps we should avoid a crash for this situation?

[stujones11]

Perhaps we should avoid a crash for this situation?

I am not sure how that would be possible, calling a method on a string or a table will obviously cause a crash. I think the documentation is fairly clear about this and the reason why ItemStack() is provided by the api.

[rubenwardy]

If the parameter is called itemstack then it should always give an object that conforms to ItemStack. It's misleading otherwise

[stujones11]

Yeah, I have misread the issue, register_on_craft should be made to consistently provide a valid userdata type object. Maybe register_on_craft is not the only callback guilty of this?

[SmallJoker]

bump
@fermionic, I check all enabled mods that use minetest.register_on_craft. Most likely this error is caused by one of these. They return string or tables (since it's a valid stack, by definition), but these values do not get converted to the userdata ItemStack anywhere, that's why calling functions such as :get_wear() fail.
A fix for this would be to manually convert the returned value to an ItemStack in builtin/game/register.lua