Lua 5.1 Reference Manual

The reference manual is the official definition of the Lua language. For a complete introduction to Lua programming, see the book Programming in Lua.

This manual is also available as a book:

Lua 5.1 Reference Manual
by R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes
Lua.org, August 2006
ISBN 85-903798-3-3

Buy a copy of this book and help to support the Lua project.

start · contents · index · other versions

Contents

• 1 – Introduction

• 2 – The Language
  • 2.1 – Lexical Conventions
  • 2.2 – Values and Types
    • 2.2.1 – Coercion
  • 2.3 – Variables
  • 2.4 – Statements
    • 2.4.1 – Chunks
    • 2.4.2 – Blocks
    • 2.4.3 – Assignment
    • 2.4.4 – Control Structures
    • 2.4.5 – For Statement
    • 2.4.6 – Function Calls as Statements
    • 2.4.7 – Local Declarations
  • 2.5 – Expressions
    • 2.5.1 – Arithmetic Operators
    • 2.5.2 – Relational Operators
    • 2.5.3 – Logical Operators
    • 2.5.4 – Concatenation
    • 2.5.5 – The Length Operator
    • 2.5.6 – Precedence
    • 2.5.7 – Table Constructors
    • 2.5.8 – Function Calls
    • 2.5.9 – Function Definitions
  • 2.6 – Visibility Rules
  • 2.7 – Error Handling
  • 2.8 – Metatables
  • 2.9 – Environments
  • 2.10 – Garbage Collection
    • 2.10.1 – Garbage-Collection Metamethods
    • 2.10.2 – Weak Tables
  • 2.11 – Coroutines

• 3 – The Application Program Interface
  • 3.1 – The Stack
  • 3.2 – Stack Size
  • 3.3 – Pseudo-Indices
  • 3.4 – C Closures
  • 3.5 – Registry
  • 3.6 – Error Handling in C
  • 3.7 – Functions and Types
  • 3.8 – The Debug Interface

• 4 – The Auxiliary Library
  • 4.1 – Functions and Types

• 5 – Standard Libraries
  • 5.1 – Basic Functions
  • 5.2 – Coroutine Manipulation
  • 5.3 – Modules
  • 5.4 – String Manipulation
    • 5.4.1 – Patterns
  • 5.5 – Table Manipulation
  • 5.6 – Mathematical Functions
  • 5.7 – Input and Output Facilities
  • 5.8 – Operating System Facilities
  • 5.9 – The Debug Library

• 6 – Lua Stand-alone

• 7 – Incompatibilities with the Previous Version
  • 7.1 – Changes in the Language
  • 7.2 – Changes in the Libraries
  • 7.3 – Changes in the API

• 8 – The Complete Syntax of Lua

Index