Use a live demo to play with Lua if you don't want to install anything on your computer. To run Lua programs on your computer, you'll need a standalone Lua interpreter and perhaps some additional …

Nevertheless, Lua is still the same language; most things that we will see here are valid regardless of how you are using Lua. For a start, we recommend that you use the stand-alone interpreter (that is, …

Dec 10, 2025 · Lua's official website provides complete information about Lua, including an executive summary, tips on getting started, and updated documentation, especially the reference manual, …

As soon as you enter this line, Lua runs it and starts a new chunk in the next line. By then, the local declaration is already out of scope. To run such examples in interactive mode, you should enclose all …

if line > MAXLINES then showpage() line = 0 end When you write nested if s, you can use elseif. It is similar to an else followed by an if, but it avoids the need for multiple end s: if op == "+" then r = a + b …

Lua is implemented as a library, written in clean C, the common subset of Standard C and C++. The Lua distribution includes a host program called lua, which uses the Lua library to offer a complete, …

Although we refer to Lua as an interpreted language, Lua always precompiles source code to an intermediate form before running it. (This is not a big deal: Most interpreted languages do the same.)

You can help to support the Lua project by buying a book published by Lua.org and by making a donation. You can also help to spread the word about Lua by buying Lua products at Zazzle.

The stand-alone interpreter (also called lua.c due to its source file, or simply lua due to its executable) is a small program that allows the direct use of Lua.

After saving a modification that you make to your program, you execute dofile("prog.lua") in the Lua console to load the new code; then you can exercise the new code, calling its functions and printing …