Learning Lua

Introduction

• This Repo's most content is taken from Programming in Lua 4th Ed. by Roberto Lerusalimschy of Lua.Org

Get Lua

• Installation

  • wget https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.4.7.tar.gz

  • tar zxf lua-5.4.7.tar.gz

  • cd lua-5.4.7

  • make all install

• Test Installation

  $ lua -v
  Lua 5.4.7  Copyright (C) 1994-2024 Lua.org, PUC-Rio

  • Start Lua in interactive Mode like ipython or python by running lua on command line

    • To Exit Lua Interactive Mode use ctrl-D or os.exit()

  • To start an interactive session after running a lua script use eg. lua -i basics-1.lua. Helpful for Debugging

Basics

• Running Chunks

  • Each piece of code that Lua executes, such as a file or a single line in interactive mode, is called a chunk.

    • Run chunks by starting lua in interactive mode directly with lua

    • Run chunks by dofile("<filename>") inside another lua script or in an interactive session

    • Run chunks by adding #!/usr/bin/env lua at the beginning of a lua script , the set executable bit for script via chmod +x basics-1.lua ,and run it with name of script eg ./basics-1.lua