Lua Fundamentals Training Course

Introduction to Lua

• Historical background
• Lua's objectives, key features, and limitations
• Accessing Lua documentation and tutorials
• Installing the Lua interpreter
• Configuring and utilising LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

• Identifiers
• Single-line and block comments
• Global variables and enforcing strict variable declaration
• 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
• Object types: function, userdata, thread, table
• References and objects versus primitive values
• The critical role of tables in Lua

Introduction to tables and their versatility

• Tables as associative arrays
• Tables as numeric arrays and sequences

Basic control structures

• The if-then-elseif-else-end structure
• The while loop
• The repeat-until loop
• The simple for loop

Error handling

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

Example programs

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

More about functions

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

Iterators and co-routines

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

Metatables and metamethods

• Implementing a set using tables
• The __tostring metamethod
• Arithmetic metamethods
• The __index and __newindex metamethods
• The __len metamethod

Modules and packages

• Using existing modules
• Creating custom modules
• Organising modules into packages

Object-oriented programming

• Core components of OOP in Lua
• Practical examples

Discussion on more advanced language features

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