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 Integrate Lua with C++

You're reading from   Integrate Lua with C++ Seamlessly integrate Lua scripting to enhance application flexibility

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Product type Paperback
Published in Oct 2023
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781805128618
Length 216 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Wenhuan Li Wenhuan Li
Author Profile Icon Wenhuan Li
Wenhuan Li
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Table of Contents (18) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Part 1 – Lua Basics FREE CHAPTER
2. Chapter 1: Getting Your C++ Project Lua-Ready 3. Chapter 2: Lua Fundamentals 4. Part 2 – Calling Lua from C++
5. Chapter 3: How to Call Lua from C++ 6. Chapter 4: Mapping Lua Types to C++ 7. Chapter 5: Working with Lua Tables 8. Part 3 – Calling C++ from Lua
9. Chapter 6: How to Call C++ from Lua 10. Chapter 7: Working with C++ Types 11. Chapter 8: Abstracting a C++ Type Exporter 12. Part 4 – Advanced Topics
13. Chapter 9: Recapping Lua-C++ Communication Mechanisms 14. Chapter 10: Managing Resources 15. Chapter 11: Multithreading with Lua 16. Index 17. Other Books You May Enjoy

Implementing a Lua executor

We will implement a reusable C++ Lua executor class step by step. Let us call it LuaExecutor. We will continue to improve this executor by adding new functions to it.

How to include the Lua library in C++ code

To work with the Lua library, you only need three header files:

  • lua.h for core functions. Everything here has a lua_ prefix.
  • lauxlib.h for the auxiliary library (auxlib). The auxiliary library provides more helper functions built on top of the core functions in lua.h. Everything here has a luaL_ prefix.
  • lualib.h for loading and building Lua libraries. For example, the luaL_openlibs function opens all standard libraries.

Lua is implemented in C and those three header files are C header files. To work with C++, Lua provides a convenient wrapper, lua.hpp, whose content is as follows:

extern "C" {
#include "lua.h"
#include "lualib.h"
#include "lauxlib.h"
}

In your C++ code, lua...

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