luac
(1)
Name
luac - Lua compiler
Synopsis
luac [ options ] [ filenames ]
Description
User Commands LUAC(1)
NAME
luac - Lua compiler
SYNOPSIS
luac [ options ] [ filenames ]
DESCRIPTION
luac is the Lua compiler. It translates programs written in
the Lua programming language into binary files that can be
later loaded and executed.
The main advantages of precompiling chunks are: faster load-
ing, protecting source code from accidental user changes,
and off-line syntax checking.
Pre-compiling does not imply faster execution because in Lua
chunks are always compiled into bytecodes before being exe-
cuted. luac simply allows those bytecodes to be saved in a
file for later execution.
Pre-compiled chunks are not necessarily smaller than the
corresponding source. The main goal in pre-compiling is
faster loading.
The binary files created by luac are portable only among
architectures with the same word size and byte order.
luac produces a single output file containing the bytecodes
for all source files given. By default, the output file is
named luac.out, but you can change this with the -o option.
In the command line, you can mix text files containing Lua
source and binary files containing precompiled chunks. This
is useful to combine several precompiled chunks, even from
different (but compatible) platforms, into a single precom-
piled chunk.
You can use '-' to indicate the standard input as a source
file and '--' to signal the end of options (that is, all
remaining arguments will be treated as files even if they
start with '-').
The internal format of the binary files produced by luac is
likely to change when a new version of Lua is released. So,
save the source files of all Lua programs that you precom-
pile.
OPTIONS
Options must be separate.
-l produce a listing of the compiled bytecode for Lua's
virtual machine. Listing bytecodes is useful to learn
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User Commands LUAC(1)
about Lua's virtual machine. If no files are given,
then luac loads luac.out and lists its contents.
-o file
output to file, instead of the default luac.out. (You
can use '-' for standard output, but not on platforms
that open standard output in text mode.) The output
file may be a source file because all files are loaded
before the output file is written. Be careful not to
overwrite precious files.
-p load files but do not generate any output file. Used
mainly for syntax checking and for testing precompiled
chunks: corrupted files will probably generate errors
when loaded. Lua always performs a thorough integrity
test on precompiled chunks. Bytecode that passes this
test is completely safe, in the sense that it will not
break the interpreter. However, there is no guarantee
that such code does anything sensible. (None can be
given, because the halting problem is unsolvable.) If
no files are given, then luac loads luac.out and tests
its contents. No messages are displayed if the file
passes the integrity test.
-s strip debug information before writing the output file.
This saves some space in very large chunks, but if
errors occur when running a stripped chunk, then the
error messages may not contain the full information
they usually do. For instance, line numbers and names
of local variables are lost.
-v show version information.
FILES
luac.out default output file
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/lua |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
lua(1)
http://www.lua.org/
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User Commands LUAC(1)
DIAGNOSTICS
Error messages should be self explanatory.
AUTHORS
L. H. de Figueiredo, R. Ierusalimschy and W. Celes
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
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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