Programming in Lua

by Roberto Ierusalimschy

Book Overview

Lua is the language of choice for anyone who needs a scripting language that is simple, efficient, extensible, portable, and free. Currently, Lua is being used in areas ranging from embedded systems... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 8590379825
• ISBN13: 9788590379829
• Release Date: March 2006
• Publisher: Lua.Org
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.3" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

An Elegant Book for an Elegant Language

I am new to Lua. While a C++ developer, having used Perl, Python and Ruby, I was suprised by how much you can do with this compact scripting language. The second edition is as eloquently written as the first (which is available online), but with new material and even more examples. In little time it introduced me to all aspects of the latest version of Lua -- 5.1 -- which includes a number of new features such as the new package system. Being a newcomer, it was nice to have a recent book covering all aspects of this latest version. The book is well organized. It works as both a primer and complete course on the langauge. It covers the basic tenets and first principles, as well as the subtleties. It is written in the spirit of Lua: accomplishing much in minimal space. It does so through crisp, engaging writing and thorough, well-crafted examples. It is one of those books that feels timeless -- so well done that you mark your name on it with a Sharpie. Lua is both a language and developer's tool. Part IV of the book, devoted to the C API, is as thorough for developers as the preceding parts are for language users. As I am using Lua in a multi-threaded environment, the second edition had the perfect example covering everything I needed to know -- from managing multiple states (interpreters) to wrapping C/C++ data structures. I was so pleased with the book, I emailed the author. If you use Lua, and especially if you are new to Lua, you won't be disappointed with this edition.

The Blue PiL

Reading the first PiL left us with that hard-to-believe-it-could-get-any-better impression. But Roberto did it again and surprised us with another 5-stars gem! The Lua language has evolved (a lot!) and version 5.1 brings new mechanisms such as a full modules/packaging support system, tighter control over garbage collection, new (minor but significant) syntax notations, all of which justify this second edition. For the 5.0 user the book also offers plenty of new examples, such as graph management, extensive string content manipulation and a complete multithreaded C system using different Lua states in each thread. Lua itself would be a good enough reason to buy another book written by its creator, but PiL 2 is much more than one could expect. The book is full of brilliant solutions and tackles a wide variety of computing challenges, in the best Knuth style as hardly seen ever since. The text not only shows spotless academic rigour and consistency, but it is also astonishingly clear, pleasant to read and carefully crafted and lapidated by a writer who learned English as a second language. A bedside book!

Excellent book

Lua is a gem among programming languages. Its designers have commendably placed a high value on keeping the language small, readable and portable. The diminutive size and simple syntax of Lua, however, belie a very rich, highly factored and stable architecture. It is a fun language in which to program. Lua dovetails beautifully with lower level languages by means of a C interface, and its drum tight language processor and libraries are right at home in event-driven graphical applications as well as console programs.The excellent book "Programming in Lua" by Roberto Ierusalimschy provides developers with a broad summary of the language. The author includes a myriad of small examples, each of which is well focused and easily grasped. Different solutions to a given problem are often accompanied by benchmark figures. Prof. Ierusalimschy has an educator's gift for finding the appropriate level at which to write, and readers will appreciate the conversational nature of his writing. Unlike many programming language books, "Programming in Lua" has a strong content-to-fluff ratio throughout. The book provides valuable explanations of language and library features which even the careful reader of the Lua reference manual might miss. In addition, over twenty C library entry points are discussed (and, thankfully, indexed) which are not mentioned in the reference manual.It is hard to conceive of a software project which would not benefit from using Lua, both as an embedded component and as a standalone interpreter of scripts. The book "Programming in Lua" is valuable for anyone with an interest in this lovely language.

A valuable multi-level book

Lua is a free scripting language with an interesting development history. It is a language that is gaining wider acceptance thanks to small size, readable syntax, expressive power, efficiency, ANSI C portability and easy two-way integration with C and C++. It is also useful as a data-description language that can be tailored to one's needs.Written by the chief architect of the language, this book is aimed at programmers whishing to approach or to better understand Lua and the (often unsuspected) capabilities offered by a fully dynamic language.Despite its deceptively small size (260 pages) and a plain, readable style with an eye-resting typesetting, "Programming in Lua" packs an impressive amount of information peppered with small, clear code examples to help digesting it; it reminds me of my favorite programming book: the K & R (Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C programming language"). It is a multi-level book that always gives something new at every reading.Rather than offer a catalogue of functions (left to the downloadable reference manual), the book's four sections introduce capabilities, concepts and interesting techniques that may surprise programmers used to static languages.The first section is devoted to the language itself, including not-so-common subjects like dynamic typing, multiple results, first-class functions, closures, iterators and coroutines. The following section shows how to build all sorts of data structures, from simple arrays and lists to packages and objects, using Lua's "tables" and the powerful idea of "metatables" that makes the language easily customizable. The third section introduces the standard libraries (they are actually optional, e.g. in microcontroller applications) with special emphasis on the simple but versatile pattern matching capabilities.The fourth and last section is different: aimed at system programmers, it explains in detail how to interface Lua and C, both to add new functions to Lua and to use Lua inside a C program (possibly called from programs written in other languages)."Programming in Lua" covers version 5.0 of the language, which is now mature and stable. I am using Lua both as a general-purpose 'light' language for system tasks or small programs, and as an embedded language inside C++ applications: the combined power of the two languages is impressive. I liked this book a lot, I learned much from it and I've done it the honor of a place besides my well-thumbed K & R.

Let the revolution begin

The Lua programming Language has been around for a while but this book by Roberto Ierusalimschy will be a mark in its history. The book managed to surpass every expectation I had for it, and I was eager! From someone with no Lua knowledge to those with Lua klocs in their backs, this book will be a great companion in a nice to read trip down the Lua 5.0 lane.The book begins with the basic Lua elements and structures and then advances through control structures, functions, iterators and coroutines. Iterators and coroutines are one of those language features that may confuse the first timers, but the author manages to show the concepts and inter relations between them in a way that clarified the issues even for a seasoned Lua programmer. Alas, make no mistake, the whole first part is totally worthwhile for non beginners.The second part of the book shows one of Lua biggest assets: tables and metatables. I've seen people sneer at Lua at first glance and then convert themselves to Lua evangelists simply for the features of tables and metatables. The author does his magic and makes a whole set of apparently complex concepts flow by the reader as fluid and logical as they can be.By the way, fluency is arguably one of the major benefits of this book. The reader is taken from substrate to substrate of the Lua way of life without even taking notice. Every end of chapter left me with the satisfaction of having been presented with one more facet of Lua and with the tranquility that everything was falling in place at the right timing.After tables and metatables, the book presents the concepts of Packages and Object Orientation in Lua. If you had any doubt ever that Lua was able to sustain "real" Modular/OO programming, be prepared to replace your dogmas. The book not only clarifies how to do it in Lua but also shows how easy and clear the coding gets.The author ends the second part of the book with a great chapter on Weak Tables. I have to admit that I was somewhat refractory to Weak Tables before I read this book, but after this single chapter I was converted. May the name "weak" not influence your judgment on those Weak Tables. They are great, and the book showed more about them than I was expecting.The third part of the book focuses on the standard libraries. Those would be the Table, String, I/O, Operating System and Debug libraries. Instead of repeating the contents of the Lua reference manual, the author manages to show lots of new information about the libraries by the use of examples and clear explanations. There are some points in Lua that can indeed be quite idiosyncratic at a glance, but this book is more than enough to clarify every one of them.The fourth and last part of the book brings us the Lua C API. For the beginner Lua programmer this part will probably be skipped, but for the average programmer and most of all for the hardcore Lua explorer, this part will be pure delight. C programming is not for the faint of heart, but having a Lua interfa