Lua Fundamentals Training Course

Introduction to Lua

• Historical background
• Design goals, features, and non-goals
• Documentation and tutorial resources
• Installing the Lua interpreter
• Setting up and utilizing LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

• Identifiers
• Standard and block comments
• Global variables and enforcing strict mode
• Local variables
• Standalone programs and command-line arguments
• Compilation units, chunks, expressions, and semicolons

Data types and data structures

• Primitive types: nil, boolean, number, string
• Reference types: function, userdata, thread, table
• Distinguishing between references/objects and basic values
• The central role of tables in Lua

Introduction to tables and their versatility

• Tables as associative arrays
• Tables as numeric arrays or sequences

Basic control structures

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

Error handling

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

Example programs

• Polynomial evaluation
• Breadth-first search algorithm
• Additional practice exercises

Advanced functions

• Named arguments
• Object-oriented method calls
• Closures
• Currying
• Tail calls
• Multiple assignment and return values
• Varargs (variable number of arguments)

Iterators and co-routines

• The generic for loop
• Stateless versus stateful iterators
• Comparing iterators and co-routines

Metatables and metamethods

• Implementing a Set data structure
• 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, eval, and loading mechanisms