Lua Fundamentals Training Course

Introduction to Lua

• A brief historical overview
• Lua’s design goals, key features, and non-goals
• Accessing Lua documentation and tutorials
• Installing the Lua interpreter
• Setting up and utilizing LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

• Identifiers
• Comments and block comments
• Global variables and enforcing strictness
• Local variables
• Standalone programs and program arguments
• Compilation units, chunks, expressions, and semicolons

Data types and data structures

• Basic types: nil, boolean, number, string
• Object types: function, userdata, thread, table
• Distinguishing references/objects from basic values
• The central role of tables in Lua

Introduction to tables and their versatility

• Using tables as associative arrays
• Using tables as numeric arrays and sequences

Basic control structures

• The if then elseif else end construct
• The while loop
• The repeat loop
• The simple for loop

Error handling

• Return values versus exceptions
• Converting return values to exceptions
• Converting exceptions to return values
• Error levels

Example programs

• Polynomial evaluation
• Breadth-first search
• Supplementary exercises

More about functions

• Named arguments
• Object-oriented calls
• Closures
• Currying
• Tail calls
• Multiple assignment and return values
• Variable arguments (varargs)

Iterators and co-routines

• The generic for loop
• Stateless versus stateful iterators
• Key differences between iterators and co-routines

Metatables and metamethods

• The set data structure example
• The __tostring metamethod
• Arithmetic metamethods
• The __index and __newindex metamethods
• The __len metamethod

Modules and packages

• Utilizing existing modules
• Creating custom modules
• Organizing modules into packages

Object-oriented programming

• Core building blocks of OOP in Lua
• Practical examples

Discussion on more advanced language features

• Weak tables
• Finalizers
• Compilation, evaluation, and loading