Announcing Lua, a language for extending applications
Luiz H de Figueiredo
* What is Lua?
Lua is a simple, yet powerful, language for extending applications.
Lua has been developed by TeCGraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group
of PUC-Rio, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Dozens of industrial products developed by TeCGraf use Lua.
* Some features of Lua
Lua has a simple, pascal-like, syntax.
Variables need no declaration.
Lua has powerful data description constructs.
Functions can receive a variable number of arguments and can return multiple
values.
Lua programs are compiled into bytecodes, which are then interpreted to
simulate a virtual machine.
Lua is written in ANSI C and is completely portable.
* Installing
To make, simply type domake.
If make succeeds, you get an interpreter in ./bin/lua.
The libraries are in ./lib. The include files are in ./include.
You don't need the other directories for development.
There is documentation in ./doc and tests in ./test.
The documentation includes a reference manual and an article on the
design and implementation of Lua.
This distribution is biased towards SunOS 4 with gcc but it is simple to
change the Makefiles for other systems.
* Legal matters
Lua is not in the public domain; TeCGraf keeps its copyright.
Nevertheless, Lua is freely available for academic purposes by anonymous ftp
at ftp.icad.puc-rio.br:/pub/lua/lua-1.1.tar.Z.
For commercial purposes, please contact us.
* Contacting the authors
Send your comments, bug reports and anything else to l...@icad.puc-rio.br.
Please send me email if you download Lua so that we can know how far it goes.
--
Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo email: l...@icad.puc-rio.br
TeCGraf-Grupo de Tecnologia em Computacao Grafica, ITS, PUC-Rio
Rua Marques de Sao Vicente 225 voice: +55 21 529-9424
22453-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil fax: +55 21 511-5645
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