NAME
        Lua - the Lua programming language

NOTE
        This manual page is incomplete.  If you feel that you can make contributions to it, please do, and create a pull request.

OVERVIEW/INTRODUCTION
        This manual page attempts to give an overview of the basics of Lua.  It assumes that the reader has previous experience with programming and is familiar with if/else blocks, while and for loops; in essence, the basics of computer programming.  I do NOT attempt to teach the basic grounding concepts of programming which I have previously mentioned.

        For complete function documentation on the Lua programming language, see https://lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html.

THE LANGUAGE
        Types
            Lua provides seven types: string, table, number, function, boolean, thread, and nil.  An eighth type, userdata, is sometimes used (usually from the C side) but will not be covered here.

        Global Environment
            Lua's global environment (_G) takes the form of a table (see below).  This simpifies program flow and allows for easier sandbox creation (more on this later).

        Variables
            In Lua, unless explicitly declared as local, all variables are global - that is, not affected by scope.  Local variables are usually faster to access, and are lighter on memory as they are cleared when the scope is exited and garbage-collected.

            Variable names can contain any combination, except certain reserved keywords, of alphanumeric characters plus the underscore.  Variable names may not begin with a number and may be of any practical length - in my testing I was able to assign a roughly 28,700-character variable name.

        Tables
            Lua's tables are simple collections of key-value pairs or hashmaps, similar to Python's dictionary or, loosely, C's struct.  Both keys and values can be of any type.

            Tables are declared using curly braces ({}) and indexed using square braces ([]).  Table keys provide value indices, and if a key is a syntactically valid variable name it can be indexed with the syntax table.key rather than table[key].

        Metatables
            Metatables are tables containing specific fields which declare otherwise undefined behavior on certain objects.  Excepting tables and userdata, every type has a single shared metatable which cannot be changed except through debug.setmetatable, which is not available in OpenComputers.

            For example, metatables may be used to implement object-oriented programming (see the class(3) library included with Monolith).

            Monolith facilitates using the __type field of metatables to implement custom types, through an override of the type function in the kernel.

        Threading
            Lua does not support multithreading.  Monolith, OpenOS, PsychOS, OpenNT, Fuchas, Plan9k, and many other operating systems that may provide the illusion of multithreading provide a cooperative implementation using Lua's built-in coroutine API.

        Scoping
            In Lua, as in many other languages, local variables are local to the block they are in, and any sub-blocks.  For example, in the following code sample, variable a is available to the entire program, while variable b is available only to the block in which it is declared.  Local variables are only usable after they are declared, while global variables may be used and declared anywhere in a program.

                local a = "This is a string."
                do
                  local b = 46209
                  print(a, b) -- prints "This is a string.    46209"
                end
                print(b) -- prints "nil"

        Libraries
            Lua libraries are loaded using the require function.  In OpenComputers, this function is provided by the OS and is unavailable when programming an EEPROM or writing an OS from scratch.  The OS also provides many libraries such as event(3) or io(2).

NON-STANDARD LUA APIS PROVIDED BY OPENCOMPUTERS
        OpenComputers provides a few extra APIs and one extra function, to aid in writing programs.  These are the unicode(2), component(2), and computer(2) APIs, as well as the checkArg(2) function.

COPYRIGHT
        Lua is copyright (c) 1994-2020 Lua.org, PUC-Rio