Lua 5.0 Reference Manual

The reference manual is the official definition of the Lua language.
For a complete introduction to Lua programming, see the book Programming in Lua.

Copyright © 2003–2006 Tecgraf, PUC-Rio. Freely available under the terms of the Lua license.

Contents

• 1 – Introduction

• 2 – The Language
  • 2.1 – Lexical Conventions
  • 2.2 – Values and Types
    • 2.2.1 – Coercion
  • 2.3 – Variables
  • 2.4 – Statements
    • 2.4.1 – Chunks
    • 2.4.2 – Blocks
    • 2.4.3 – Assignment
    • 2.4.4 – Control Structures
    • 2.4.5 – For Statement
    • 2.4.6 – Function Calls as Statements
    • 2.4.7 – Local Declarations
  • 2.5 – Expressions
    • 2.5.1 – Arithmetic Operators
    • 2.5.2 – Relational Operators
    • 2.5.3 – Logical Operators
    • 2.5.4 – Concatenation
    • 2.5.5 – Precedence
    • 2.5.6 – Table Constructors
    • 2.5.7 – Function Calls
    • 2.5.8 – Function Definitions
  • 2.6 – Visibility Rules
  • 2.7 – Error Handling
  • 2.8 – Metatables
  • 2.9 – Garbage Collection
    • 2.9.1 – Garbage-Collection Metamethods
    • 2.9.2 – Weak Tables
  • 2.10 – Coroutines

• 3 – The Application Program Interface
  • 3.1 – States
  • 3.2 – The Stack and Indices
  • 3.3 – Stack Manipulation
  • 3.4 – Querying the Stack
  • 3.5 – Getting Values from the Stack
  • 3.6 – Pushing Values onto the Stack
  • 3.7 – Controlling Garbage Collection
  • 3.8 – Userdata
  • 3.9 – Metatables
  • 3.10 – Loading Lua Chunks
  • 3.11 – Manipulating Tables
  • 3.12 – Manipulating Environments
  • 3.13 – Using Tables as Arrays
  • 3.14 – Calling Functions
  • 3.15 – Protected Calls
  • 3.16 – Defining C Functions
  • 3.17 – Defining C Closures
  • 3.18 – Registry
  • 3.19 – Error Handling in C
  • 3.20 – Threads

• 4 – The Debug Interface
  • 4.1 – Stack and Function Information
  • 4.2 – Manipulating Local Variables and Upvalues
  • 4.3 – Hooks

• 5 – Standard Libraries
  • 5.1 – Basic Functions
  • 5.2 – Coroutine Manipulation
  • 5.3 – String Manipulation
  • 5.4 – Table Manipulation
  • 5.5 – Mathematical Functions
  • 5.6 – Input and Output Facilities
  • 5.7 – Operating System Facilities
  • 5.8 – The Reflexive Debug Interface

• 6 – Lua Stand-alone

• The Complete Syntax of Lua

Last update: Fri Apr 3 01:24:33 BRT 2015