Lua Fundamentals Training Course

Introduction to Lua

• Historical context
• Lua’s objectives, features, and non-goals
• Official documentation and tutorial resources
• Installing the Lua interpreter
• Setting up and utilizing LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

• Identifiers
• Comments 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
• Object types: function, userdata, thread, table
• References and objects vs. primitive values
• The central role of tables in Lua

Introduction to tables and their flexibility

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

Basic control structures

• Conditional logic: if, then, elseif, else, end
• The while loop
• The repeat loop
• The basic for loop

Error handling

• Return values vs. exceptions
• Converting a return value into an exception
• Converting an exception into a return value
• Error levels

Example programs

• Evaluating polynomials
• Breadth-first search implementation
• Additional practice exercises

Advanced function concepts

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

Iterators and co-routines

• The generic for loop
• Stateless vs. stateful iterators
• Distinguishing iterators from co-routines

Metatables and metamethods

• Implementing sets as an example
• The __tostring metamethod
• Arithmetic metamethods
• The __index and __newindex metamethods
• The __len metamethod

Modules and packages

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

Object-oriented programming

• Foundational OOP concepts in Lua
• Practical examples

Advanced language features

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