Lua Tutorial

Lua is a lightweight, small-sized scripting language written in standard C and open-sourced in its source code form. Its design purpose is to be embedded in applications to provide flexible extension and customization capabilities.

Lua was developed by a research group at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1993. The group members included Roberto Ierusalimschy, Waldemar Celes, and Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo.

Design Purpose

Its design purpose is to be embedded in applications to provide flexible extension and customization capabilities.

Lua Features

• Lightweight: It is written in standard C and open-sourced in its source code form, compiling to just over a hundred K, making it easy to embed in other programs.

• Extensible: Lua provides very easy-to-use extension interfaces and mechanisms: these functions are provided by the host language (usually C or C++), and Lua can use them as if they were built-in features.

• Other Features:

• Supports procedural programming and functional programming;

• Automatic memory management; provides only one generic type of table, which can be used to implement arrays, hash tables, sets, objects;

• Built-in pattern matching; closures; functions can also be treated as values; provides support for multithreading (coroutines, not threads supported by the operating system);

• Supports key mechanisms required for object-oriented programming, such as data abstraction, virtual functions, inheritance, and overloading, through closures and tables.

Lua Application Scenarios

• Game development

• Standalone application scripts

• Web application scripts

• Extensions and database plugins such as MySQL Proxy and MySQL WorkBench

• Security systems, such as intrusion detection systems

First Lua Program

Next, we will use Lua to output "Hello World!"

Example (Lua 5.3)

print("Hello World!")

Upon running, "Hello, world!" will be displayed on the screen.