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Lua Quick Start Guide

You're reading from   Lua Quick Start Guide The easiest way to learn Lua programming

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jul 2018
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789343229
Length 202 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Gabor Szauer Gabor Szauer
Author Profile Icon Gabor Szauer
Gabor Szauer
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Toc

Working with the C API

The Lua C API is efficient and lightweight. There are a few important header files we need to be familiar with before writing any C code. These files are the following:

  • lua.h: Provides all the functions needed to work with Lua. All functions in this file are prefixed with lua_.
  • luaxlib.h: Uses the public API exposed in lua.h to provide higher levels of abstraction for common tasks. All functions in this file are prefixed with luaL_.
  • lualib.h: Provides the standard Lua libraries. All functions in this file are also prefixed with luaL_.

Lua does not allocate any global memory. Instead it stores all of its states in a structure called lua_State. This structure contains everything that the Lua runtime needs to operate. Putting a mutex lock around your lua_State object is a fast and easy way to make sure any Lua instance is thread safe. It's perfectly...

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