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Lua crash course

The Lua crash course provides a condensed overview of the Lua programming language, covering lexical conventions, types and values, variables, statements, bitwise operators, and coroutines. It emphasizes Lua's case sensitivity, dynamic typing, and the use of tables as a fundamental data structure. The document includes examples of control structures and operations to illustrate the language's syntax and functionality.

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Gustavo Luis Condoy Pogo
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© © All Rights Reserved
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4 views

Lua crash course

The Lua crash course provides a condensed overview of the Lua programming language, covering lexical conventions, types and values, variables, statements, bitwise operators, and coroutines. It emphasizes Lua's case sensitivity, dynamic typing, and the use of tables as a fundamental data structure. The document includes examples of control structures and operations to illustrate the language's syntax and functionality.

Uploaded by

Gustavo Luis Condoy Pogo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lua crash course https://manual.coppeliarobotics.com/en/luaCrashCourse.

htm

Lua crash course


Following crash course is an extremely condensed extract from the official Lua reference manual. For more
details refer to the free Lua Quick Reference e-book, to the Lua website and to the numerous examples
contained in the demo scenes.

Lexical conventions
• Lua is a case sensitive language. "and", "And" or "AND" are not the same.
• Following are Lua keywords: and break do else elseif end false for function if in local nil not or repeat
return then true until while
• Following strings denote other tokens: + - * / % ^ # == ~= <= >= < > = ( ) { } [ ] ; : , . .. ...
• Literal strings can be delimited by matching single or double quotes (e.g. 'hello' or "hello")
• A comment starts with a double hyphen (--) anywhere outside of a string. e.g.:
a=4 -- variable a is now 4!

Types and values


• Lua is a dynamically typed language which means that variables do not have types; only values do.
• There are 8 basic types in Lua:

• nil type of the value nil whose main property is to be different from any other value.
It usually represents the absence of a useful value
• bool values false and true (both nil and false make a condition false; any other value
makes it true)
• number both integer and floating-point numbers (has internally two distinct
representations: long integer and double)
• string arrays of characters (strings may contain any 8-bit character, including
embedded zeros)
• function Lua functions
• userdata can hold arbitrary C data (corresponds to a block of raw memory)
• thread independent threads of execution used to implement coroutines
• table arrays that can hold values of any type except nil

Variables
• There are 3 kinds of variables: global variables, local variables and table fields. Any variable is assumed
to be global unless explicitly declared as local
• Before the first assignment to a variable, its value is nil
• Square brackets are used to index a table (e.g. value=table[x]). The first value in a table is at position 1
(and not 0 as for C arrays)

Statements

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Lua crash course https://manual.coppeliarobotics.com/en/luaCrashCourse.htm

• Relational operators (always result in false or true)

• == equality
• ~= negation of equality
• < smaller than
• > bigger than
• <= smaller or equal than
• >= bigger or equal than

• Lua allows multiple assignments. The syntax for assignments defines a list of variables on the left side
and a list of expressions on the right side. The elements in both lists are separated by commas:
x,y,z = myTable[1],myTable[2],myTable[3]

• If control structure (by example):


if value1==value2 then
print('value1 and value2 are same!')
end

• For control structure (by example):


for i=1,4,1 do -- count from 1 to 4 with increments of 1
print(i)
end

• While control structure (by example):


i=0
while i~=4 do
i=i+1
end

• Repeat control structure (by example):


i=0
repeat
i=i+1
until i==4

• Table operations (by example):


myTable={'firstValue',2,3} -- builds a table with 3 values

print(myTable[1]) -- prints the first element in the table

table.insert(myTable,4) -- appends the number 4 to the table

• Concatenation (by example):


a='hello'
b=' world'
c=a..b -- c contains 'hello world'

• Length operator #:
stringLength=#'hello world'

tableSize=#{1,2,3,4,5}

Bitwise operators
• Lua supports the following bitwise operators:

• & bitwise AND

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Lua crash course https://manual.coppeliarobotics.com/en/luaCrashCourse.htm

• | bitwise OR
• ~ bitwise exclusive OR
• >> right shift
• << unary bitwise NOT
• ~ unary bitwise NOT

Coroutines or threads
• Coroutines are easily created and resumed with:
-- Create a coroutine:
corout=coroutine.create(coroutineMain)

-- Start/resume a coroutine:
if coroutine.status(corout)~='dead' then
local ok,errorMsg=coroutine.resume(corout)
if errorMsg then
error(debug.traceback(corout,errorMsg),2)
end
end

-- The coroutine itself:


function coroutineMain()
while not sim.getSimulationStopping() do
-- some code
end
end

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