Latest revision as of 03:43, 20 September 2012

Lua is a portable interpreted language. It is mainly used in Games, however it is also used by NMAP's Scripting Engine

Special thanks to Trep for his contributions to this article.

Comments

 
-- This is a single line comment
 

 
--[[
  This
  is
  a
  multi-line
  comment
  ]]
 

Variables

Variables in Lua are very simple. it is not required to declare the variable's data type, just assign a value.

 
Var = 1
Var2 = "Im a var!"
Var3 = 2
Var4 = Var * Var3
 
 

Global Variables vs Local Variables

When Variables in lua are declared, they are globally accessible unless otherwise specified with local.

 
GlobalVar = 0
local LocalVar = 1337
 

Functions

Functions in lua are quite easy as well.

 
function SimpleAddition(x,y,z)
   local Sum = x + y + z --only accessible from within this context.
   SumTimesTwo = Sum * 2 -- can be referenced from anywhere in the current file, or wherever file is loaded.
   return Sum
end
 

Tables

Lua tables are a bit like arrays, except that an array is.. well an array of values. A Table, is an array of Keys, and those Keys have values.

Declaring an empty Table

 
MyTable = {} --declares an empty table.
 

Declaring, and populating a Table

 
Numbers = {"one","Two","Three","Four","Five"} 
 

The above declaration is exact to the one below

 
Numbers = {} 
Numbers[1] = "one"
Numbers[1] = "Two"
Numbers[1] = "Three"
Numbers[1] = "Four"
Numbers[1] = "Five"
 

Indexing Tables

 
Numbers = {"one","Two","Three","Four","Five"} 
print(Numbers[0]) -- prints nil, as index starts at 1.
print(Numbers[1]) -- prints "one"