lua
(1)
Name
lua - Lua interpreter
Synopsis
lua [ options ] [ script [ args ] ]
Description
User Commands LUA(1)
NAME
lua - Lua interpreter
SYNOPSIS
lua [ options ] [ script [ args ] ]
DESCRIPTION
lua is the stand-alone Lua interpreter. It loads and exe-
cutes Lua programs, either in textual source form or in pre-
compiled binary form. (Precompiled binaries are output by
luac, the Lua compiler.) lua can be used as a batch inter-
preter and also interactively.
The given options (see below) are executed and then the Lua
program in file script is loaded and executed. The given
args are available to script as strings in a global table
named arg. If these arguments contain spaces or other char-
acters special to the shell, then they should be quoted (but
note that the quotes will be removed by the shell). The
arguments in arg start at 0, which contains the string
'script'. The index of the last argument is stored in
arg.n. The arguments given in the command line before
script, including the name of the interpreter, are available
in negative indices in arg.
At the very start, before even handling the command line,
lua executes the contents of the environment variable
LUA_INIT, if it is defined. If the value of LUA_INIT is of
the form '@filename', then filename is executed. Otherwise,
the string is assumed to be a Lua statement and is executed.
Options start with '-' and are described below. You can use
'--' to signal the end of options.
If no arguments are given, then -v -i is assumed when the
standard input is a terminal; otherwise, - is assumed.
In interactive mode, lua prompts the user, reads lines from
the standard input, and executes them as they are read. If
a line does not contain a complete statement, then a sec-
ondary prompt is displayed and lines are read until a com-
plete statement is formed or a syntax error is found. So,
one way to interrupt the reading of an incomplete statement
is to force a syntax error: adding a ';' in the middle of a
statement is a sure way of forcing a syntax error (except
inside multiline strings and comments; these must be closed
explicitly). If a line starts with '=', then lua displays
the values of all the expressions in the remainder of the
line. The expressions must be separated by commas. The pri-
mary prompt is the value of the global variable _PROMPT, if
this value is a string; otherwise, the default prompt is
used. Similarly, the secondary prompt is the value of the
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User Commands LUA(1)
global variable _PROMPT2. So, to change the prompts, set
the corresponding variable to a string of your choice. You
can do that after calling the interpreter or on the command
line (but in this case you have to be careful with quotes if
the prompt string contains a space; otherwise you may con-
fuse the shell.) The default prompts are "> " and ">> ".
OPTIONS
- load and execute the standard input as a file, that is,
not interactively, even when the standard input is a
terminal.
-e stat
execute statement stat. You need to quote stat if it
contains spaces, quotes, or other characters special to
the shell.
-i enter interactive mode after script is executed.
-l name
call require('name') before executing script. Typi-
cally used to load libraries.
-v show version information.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/lua |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
luac(1)
http://www.lua.org/
DIAGNOSTICS
Error messages should be self explanatory.
AUTHORS
R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, and W. Celes
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
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User Commands LUA(1)
community source was downloaded from
http://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.1.4.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.lua.org/.
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