Lua, what is Lua?

Question

Hi all?

I read something about Lua this day, and I was wondering what it was. I did a Google and Wikipedia (I understanded it until they begun talking about a C API) search bit I still don't understand it. Can someone explain me what Lua is and maybe even a tutorial for beginners?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Lua is a lightweight interpreted programming language developed in Brazil with a focus on embedding.

It is written in Pure ANSI C which means high portability, even as C++ code.

Here is an example:

print("Hello World!")

Wikipedia Summary

Official Site

Answer 2

Lua is a scripting language for C and C++. It allows to use the simpler syntax of Lua and execute these scripts in your C/C++ application. Therefore you don't have to compile the program on each change, but simply deliver a new script version.

For tutorials just use google, you'll find enough to keep you busy the next days.

Answer 3

Lua is a scripting language. Link is to lua.org. It is heavily used in game development, most notably (to me) World of Warcraft.

Answer 4

Lua is a lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It's garnered a lot of popularity partly due to it's use in many popular games. A good example of this is World of Warcraft which uses an embedded version of lua to drive the behavior of the UI elements in the game.

A good intro to the language can be found here: http://computer-programming-languages.suite101.com/article.cfm/a_brief_introduction_to_lua_scripting

And the official online reference for the language can be found here: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/

Answer 5

It's a scripting language that is designed to work with C (and C++). It is designed to be embedded into C/C++ programs. Which means unlike a lot of other scripting languages, it makes no use of global variables and such, this means you can easily thread lua scripting engines.

It also makes claims about being the fastest dynamic scripting language.

I've made use of it in PC based C++ application for creating a plugin scripting interface, and also used it as a embedded scripting language. Its quite versitile, nice and small.

as a general purpose scripting language? Its not quite in the same league as your ruby/python/perl type stuff. It doesn't have as many libraries and the user community is pretty small.

But for extending C++/C apps? its awesome.

Answer 6

I'm surprised everyone is getting this one wrong. Lua is the Hawaiian word for "toilet".

Answer 7

Also is the Local User Administrator account in Windows.