Lua

 

What is Lua?

The world of internet programming languages seems endless. Lua manages to stand out from the crowd, but it is still relatively unknown next to Python or Perl. This language has been used for well over two decades. However, it’s rarely used as a standalone programming language. Instead, developers usually use it as an embedded scripting language for individual programs. Lua has mainly been used in video games and game engines, but it’s also used as a programming language in many network and system programs.

There is a reason behind its Portuguese name. Lua was developed at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro by Roberto Ierusalimschy, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, and Waldemar Celes. Brazil was subject to strict import regulations for hardware and software until 1992, so out of sheer necessity, these three programmers developed their own scripting language called Lua. Today, it is one of the most important and popular programming languages in many sectors.

So, what exactly is Lua? Lua is essentially a library that programmers can integrate into their software to make it scriptable. Lua is supported by every standard operating system. It contains a highly compact interpreter which only requires a few hundred lines of code and can also access the library. Despite its minimalist design, the interpreter offers useful features such as automatically cleaning up data structures that are no longer used in order to free up valuable memory. The following is a summary of Lua’s most important characteristics:

• Compact
• Fast in execution
• Highly extendable
• Easy to learn
• Free to use

How is the programming language Lua structured and what is it used for?

The scripting language Lua is used for general procedural programming. As such, it’s considered to be an imperative scripting language among the programming paradigms. It is implemented as a library in C and offers functions such as Lua code and a sample host program called Lua, which provides a standalone Lua interpreter.

As a scripting language, Lua does not have its own main program. It works exclusively as an embedded part of a host application. The application can then call the previously mentioned functions via the Lua code. Thanks to the C function, Lua can be extended with numerous functions to cover the equally numerous requirements in programming. This programming language can be easily adapted to ensure that there is a common syntactical web framework.

If you have experience with Pascal, you will have no problem with Lua’s syntax, since these two programming languages are quite similar in this regard. In its syntax, multiple commands can be entered into a single line of script separated by semicolons. Lua has a total of 20 defined keywords which are easy to learn. For example, Lua generally uses function blocks that start with keywords like goto and end with end, elseif, or else. The keyword local indicates local variables that are only valid for the function block in which the keyword occurs. Function blocks can also be nested within one another.

Lua can work with the following data types: table, userdata, function, thread, nil, boolean, string, and number. Out of this list, table is the only structured data type. Variable types are determined during script execution but can be converted at any time if needed.