Lua Fundamentals Training Course

Introduction to Lua

• A brief historical overview
• Design goals, key features, and non-goals of Lua
• Accessing official Lua documentation and tutorials
• Installing the Lua interpreter
• Configuring and utilizing LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

• Identifier rules
• Comments and block comments
• Global variables and enforcing strictness
• Local variables
• Standalone programs and handling program arguments
• Compilation units, chunks, expressions, and semicolons

Data types and data structures

• Primitive types: nil, boolean, number, string
• Object 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

• Using tables as associative arrays
• Using tables as numeric arrays or sequences

Basic control structures

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

Error handling

• Distinguishing return values from exceptions
• Converting return values into exceptions
• Converting exceptions into return values
• Understanding error levels

Example programs

• Implementing polynomial evaluation
• Implementing breadth-first search
• Supplementary practice exercises

More about functions

• Handling named arguments
• Object-oriented function calls
• Closures
• Currying
• Tail calls
• Multiple assignment and return values
• Variable arguments (Varargs)

Iterators and co-routines

• The generic for loop
• Comparing stateless and stateful iterators
• Distinguishing between iterators and co-routines

Metatables and metamethods

• Practical examples using sets
• 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

• Core building blocks of OOP in Lua
• Practical examples and implementations

Discussion on more advanced language features

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