automatically getting their name from _G

unnamed classes in Lua

    local function _getNameFromG(theClass)
      for k,v in pairs(_G) do
        if v == theClass then return k end
      end
      return "Anonymous" -- non-global classes will get "Anonymous"
    end

    function Object:subclass(name)
      local theSubClass = {...}
      ...
      -- assuming that your classDict is only used for the class, not the instances
      ...
      classDict = {
        __index = function(aClass, name)
          if name=='name' then -- unnamed class
            aClass.name = _getNameFromG(aClass)
            return aClass.name
          end
          ...
        end
        __newIndex = ...
      }
      setmetatable(theSubClass, classDict)
      ...
    end