require a package that has a different file name in lua

Question

I am very new to Lua, so pardon for the retarded question.

Following this tutorial I am trying to import DeepMind dqn into an iTorch notebook.

I have cloned this repo that contains a folder called dqn where the source code lives.

I have added the path to the dqn folder

package.path = package.path .. ";/path/to/dqn/?.lua"

When I try to do

require 'dqn'

I obtain an (expected) error, since there is no file called dqn.lua in the folder. The source code of such module is, in fact, contained in the file NeuralQLearner.lua.

I have seen the documentation that hints at the problem between file and package name.

So my question is: how can I import this module correctly? How can I let Lua know that dqn it should actually look for NeuralQLearner.lua (without hardcoding into the path I guess)?

Answer 1

The trick is in:

if not dqn then
    require 'initenv'
end

put in every file. The initenv file will then define what dqn is supposed to mean. Once the path to initenv is package.path, this seems a nice trick to overcome the limitation.