Lua 5.3 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.

Lua is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It supports several programming styles: procedural, object-oriented, functional, data-driven, and data description.

If you are using the stand-alone Lua interpreter, all you have to do to run your first program is to call the interpreter (usually named lua) with the name of the text file that contains your program.

Dec 22, 2025 · To see how Lua programs compile to instructions for the Lua virtual machine, visit Lua Bytecode Explorer

Dec 23, 2025 · Lua 1.1 already featured powerful data description constructs, simple syntax, and a bytecode virtual machine. Lua 1.1 was freely available for academic purposes; commercial uses had …

Mar 30, 2015 · Abstract. Since its inception, in 1993, the Lua programming language has gone far beyond our most optimistic expectations. In this paper, we describe the trajectory of Lua, from its …

Lua is free software, and is provided as usual with no guarantees, as stated in its license. The implementation described in this manual is available at Lua's official web site, www.lua.org. Like any …

Lua compares strings in alphabetical order, which follows the locale set for Lua. For instance, with the European Latin-1 locale, we have "acai" < "açaí" < "acorde".

May 5, 2021 · Lua 5.1 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. This …

May 19, 2014 · Here is a summary of the main events around and about Lua. Check also the announcements in the mailing list, the recent changes in the site, and our RSS feeds.