Lua 5.1 Reference Manual

Lua 5.1 Reference Manual
by R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes
Lua.org, August 2006
ISBN 85-903798-3-3

Buy a copy of this book and help to support the Lua project.

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

start · contents · index · português · español

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 - The Length Operator
    • 2.5.6 - Precedence
    • 2.5.7 - Table Constructors
    • 2.5.8 - Function Calls
    • 2.5.9 - Function Definitions
  • 2.6 - Visibility Rules
  • 2.7 - Error Handling
  • 2.8 - Metatables
  • 2.9 - Environments
  • 2.10 - Garbage Collection
    • 2.10.1 - Garbage-Collection Metamethods
    • 2.10.2 - Weak Tables
  • 2.11 - Coroutines

• 3 - The Application Program Interface
  • 3.1 - The Stack
  • 3.2 - Stack Size
  • 3.3 - Pseudo-Indices
  • 3.4 - C Closures
  • 3.5 - Registry
  • 3.6 - Error Handling in C
  • 3.7 - Functions and Types
  • 3.8 - The Debug Interface

• 4 - The Auxiliary Library
  • 4.1 - Functions and Types

• 5 - Standard Libraries
  • 5.1 - Basic Functions
  • 5.2 - Coroutine Manipulation
  • 5.3 - Modules
  • 5.4 - String Manipulation
    • 5.4.1 - Patterns
  • 5.5 - Table Manipulation
  • 5.6 - Mathematical Functions
  • 5.7 - Input and Output Facilities
  • 5.8 - Operating System Facilities
  • 5.9 - The Debug Library

• 6 - Lua Stand-alone

• 7 - Incompatibilities with the Previous Version
  • 7.1 - Changes in the Language
  • 7.2 - Changes in the Libraries
  • 7.3 - Changes in the API

• 8 - The Complete Syntax of Lua

Index