get_groups() returns "&" symbol and doesn't work?

Icewheel12

Heyo,
I have recently ported my project to godot 4.1 from 3.4. And I have encountered a few issues.
One of them is that get_groups() no longer seems to function correctly. Instead of returning the nodes groups alone, it now returns the "&" symbol and then the string after it.
Below, I have the snippet of code related to the issue.

func _on_player_face_collider_a_2d_area_shape_entered(_area_rid: RID, area: Area2D, _area_shape_index: int, _local_shape_index: int):

	## SET FACE COLLIDER VARIABLES ##
     FaceColliderOverlap = true
     FaceColliderArea = area.get_groups()

Then, after this function I need to reference the data in order to determine what the player should do according to what the player is facing, but nothing happens because I am getting the "&" Symbol.

returns in debug:
Tags in Facing Collider are [&"SmallObject", &"SmallObjectType"]

And I've tried to edit my code to include the "&" symbol but it doesn't work.
Any help is appreciated as always.

xyz

Icewheel12 & in front of strings means that they are of type StringName which is a special type for optimized string constants. The & character is just a printed information that this is such type of string and it is not actually part of the string data. As you can see, it's not inside the quotes. So when comparing a StingName with a regular string simply ignore that character.

Icewheel12

xyz Gotcha, then I will continue to investigate the issue. Thank you

Icewheel12

Found the issue,

It was a tagging issue that I had set up for all small objects. When changing over from Godot 3.4, I was using your basic exported variables.
I had changed them to exported enumerators. And you can't call their values the same way as String values.
You have to use integers starting at 0. Once I made that change everything worked. Thanks again, @xyz!