Description

• A small yet extraordinarily powerful programming language, Lua achieved its popularity early on as a video game scripting language and has since evolved into a general purpose programming language that is compact enough to fit on a variety of host platforms
• This book provides programmers, game developers, and Web site developers with an in-depth look at the various aspects of programming in Lua
• Complete code samples with practical applications and robust error handling offers beginners helpful learning tools
• Diagrams provide a visual glimpse behind the scenes of important Lua features such as stacks, hash tables, garbage collection, lexical scope, and function closures
• Features discussions on managing memory, garbage collection, using libraries, strings, tables, extending Lua, event handling, databases, and Web and game programming

 

 

Acknowledgments.

Introduction.

Chapter 1: Getting Situated.

Choosing How to Install Lua.

Finding Your System’s Shell.

Dealing with Tarballs and Zip Files.

Compiling Lua.

Binary Packages.

Additional Tools.

Chapter 2: First Steps.

Numbers and Arithmetic Operations: Basic Interpreter Usage.

Interpreter Know-How.

Numerical Gotchas.

Variables and Assignment.

Strings.

Relational Operators and Boolean Values.

The nil Value.

Boolean Operators.

The Concatenation, Length, and Modulo Operators.

Automatic Conversion of Operands.

Precedence and Associativity.

Variables and Values.

Comments.

Expressions and Statements.

Compound Statements.

Chapter 3: Extending Lua with Functions.

Return Values.

Chunks as Functions.

Variable Scope.

Understanding Side Effects.

Functions Calling Functions.

Functions as Values.

Whitespace, Semicolons, and Function Calls.

Upvalues and Closures.

Chapter 4: Working with Tables.

Tables Introduced.

A Shorter Way to Write Some Keys.

Altering a Table’s Contents.

Tables as Arrays.

Array Length.

Looping through Tables.

Tables of Functions.

Functions with Variable Numbers of Arguments.

Keyword Arguments.

Different but the Same.

Building Other Data Structures from Tables.

Custom-Made Loops.

Global Variable Environments.

Chapter 5: Using Strings.

Basic String Conversion Functions

String Length.

Converting Between Characters and Character Codes.

Formatting Strings and Numbers with string.format.

Input/Output.

Pattern-Matching.

Chapter 6: Handling and Avoiding Errors.

Kinds of Errors.

Handling Errors.

Locating Errors.

Chapter 7: Using Modules.

Interfaces and Implementations.

The require Function.

Where to Put Modules.

Preserving a Module’s Interface.

Module Bookkeeping.

Bytecode.

Namespaces.

The module Function.

C Modules.

Chapter 8: Extending Lua’s Behavior with Metamethods.

Using Concatenation and Arithmetical Operators on Tables.

Relational Metamethods.

Indexing and Call Metamethods.

Non-Tables with Metamethods.

Non-Syntactical Metamethods.

Metamethod Applicability.

Chapter 9: Handling Events Naturally with Coroutines.

Coroutines and Program Control.

Managing Concurrent Tasks.

Retaining State.

Handling Events Simply.

Chapter 10: Looking Under the Hood.

Bytecode and luac.

Garbage Collection.

The Implementation of Tables and Strings.

The Debug Library.

Chapter 11: Exploring Lua’s Libraries.

Core Library.

Coroutine Library.

Package Library.

String Library.

Table Library.

Math Library.

Input/Output Library.

Operating System Library.

Debugging Library.

Chapter 12: Using Community Libraries.

Library Overview.

How Lua Interacts with Libraries.

The pack Binary Structuring Library.

The cURL File Transfer Library.

The gd Graphics Library.

The SQLite Database Library.

Chapter 13: Interfacing Lua with Other Languages.

How C Programs Use Lua.