Lua
What is Lua?
Installing Lua
brew install lua luarocks
Once installed you can run the lua repl by writing lua
in your terminal:
▶ lua
Lua 5.4.3 Copyright (C) 1994-2021 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
>
Or interpret a lua script running the lua interpreter:
lua myprogram.lua
Variables
You can create variables in Lua by assignment a value to a variable like so:
isGood = true
number = 42
number2 = 12.23
str = 'a string'
str2 = "another string"
str3 = [[ a multiline string
that expands
multiple lines. ]]
Variables are global by default, you can create a local variable using the local
keyword`:
number = 42 -- global variable
local number = 42 -- local variable (block scope)
Comments
-- This is a comment in lua
--[[
This is a multiline comment in lua
--]]
Control Flow
if age > 21 then
print('Allowed to drink beer! Yippie!')
elseif age > 20 then
print('Almost there')
else
print('Not allowed to drink beer')
end
while countdown > 0 do
countdown = countdown - 1
end
Logic operators
== -- equal
~= -- unequal
Input and Output
print("hello world");
io.write("hello world") -- Defaults to stdout
Resources
- lua.org
- Lua live demo environment
- Learn Lua in Y minutes
- luarocks, the lua package manager.
- Books

Written by Jaime González García , Dad, Husband, Front-end software engineer, UX designer, amateur pixel artist, tinkerer and master of the arcane arts. You should follow him on Twitter where he shares useful stuff! (and is funny too).Follow @vintharas