Learning Lua

Using Programming in Lua (4th Edition)

Setup

Setup (Arch Linux):

$ sudo pacman -S lua luarocks

Usage

Interactive:

$ lua
> print("Hello, Lua!")

Script file (examples/hello.lua):

#!/usr/bin/env lua

print("Hello, Lua!")

Running the script file:

$ lua examples/hello.lua

$ chmod +x examples/hello.lua
$ examples/hello.lua

Loading the script file from an interactive session:

$ lua
> dofile("examples/hello.lua")

Run interactive session after executing a script:

$ lua -i examples/hello.lua
>

Example library script (examples/hypot.lua):

function hypot(a, b)
    return math.sqrt(a ^ 2 + b ^ 2)
end

Load library and execute an expression:

$ lua -l examples/hypot -e 'print(hypot(3, 4))'
5.0

Links

• Official Website
  • Reference Manual (Lua 5.4)
• Programming in Lua (Book)
• LuaRocks
  • Documentation