Programming in Lua

Lua is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, and embeddable programming language. It is designed to be used as a scripting language for other programs, allowing those programs to be extended or customized. Some of the features that make Lua a good choice for this kind of use are its simplicity, speed, and flexibility.

One of the design goals of Lua is to provide a simple, consistent, and easy-to-learn language that can be used in a variety of applications. To achieve this, Lua has a small and simple standard library, and it uses a simple and easy-to-learn syntax.

Lua is also fast. It is implemented in C and has a small footprint, making it well-suited for use in applications where performance is important. It is also designed to be highly extensible, allowing you to add new functionality to it through the use of libraries and C modules.

This book covers the motivation for and context of all new Lua features (covering both language and library), providing many examples and unique background information for application programmers as well as for library developers. The focus is on how these features impact day-to-day programming, what effect combining features can have, and how you can benefit from them in practice.