Rating:
(22 reviews)
Author: Roberto Ierusalimschy
ISBN : 859037985X
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Lua is the language of choice for anyone who needs a scripting language that is simple, efficient, extensible, portable, and free. Currently, Lua is being used in areas ranging from embedded systems to Web development and is widely spread in the game industry, where knowledge of Lua is an indisputable asset. Lua also has established itself as a major language in software development for mobile devices. Programming in Lua is the official book about the language, giving a solid base for any programmer who wants to use Lua. Authored by Roberto Ierusalimschy, the chief architect of the language, it covers all aspects of Lua 5---from the basics to its API with C---explaining how to make good use of its features and giving numerous code examples. Programming in Lua is targeted at people with some programming background, but does not assume any prior knowledge about Lua or other scripting languages. This Third Edition updates the text to Lua 5.2 and brings substantial new material. In particular, it brings more than one hundred exercises distributed through all chapters, ranging from simple questions about the language to full small-size projects.
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Free Programming in Lua, Third Edition [Paperback]
- Paperback: 366 pages
- Publisher: Lua.org; 3 edition (January 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 859037985X
- ISBN-13: 978-8590379850
- Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 7.3 x 9.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Free Programming in Lua, Third Edition
If you are new to Lua, then you don't have this book. If you are not new to the language, then you already have it!
Everyone approaching Lua should start with this essential tool as it is, by far, the most efficient and authoritative way to truly understand Lua and its C-API, which is the key to Lua's ability to integrate with system languages. Written as though K&R were in the room, it has just the right amount of instructive insight and tutorials to bring context, without making it hard to actually find what you need to know. You will wear this book out.
In the Third Edition, lessons were added to the end of each chapter. Many of the lessons are actually open-ended questions, such as "Why is the elseif statement more important in Lua, than it might be in other languages?" These lend to a great deal of understanding that I found very helpful.
Other lessons and examples highlight how somethings are accomplished in Lua, which might be a specialized feature found in another, more complicated language. Here, I found myself learning about the language, gaining an appreciation of its design, as well as insights into being productive with the it.
It's not a huge book, but every section was very dense with knowledge and even after 2 years of playing around with Lua, I found it enjoyable and well worth my time to go through this new edition.
Some Editorializing on Lua:
Lua is best thought of as an implementation and a language. As a language, it is very small, yet it contains some very compact and powerful semantic constructs that you might not expect. That is, Lua is smaller than Visual Basic, yet it has coroutines, first class functions, closures and some wonderfully done meta-programming features.
Lua is a free scripting language with an interesting development history. It is light, readable, expressive, fast, almost universally portable (being ANSI C) and easily integrated with C and C++. It is widely used as dedicated scripting language, general-purpose language, data-description language and to build domain-specific languages.
Written by the chief architect of the language, "Programming in Lua" is aimed at programmers wishing to approach or to better understand Lua and the extra power offered by a fully dynamic language.
Despite its deceptively small size and a plain, readable style with eye-resting typesetting, "Programming in Lua" packs an impressive amount of information peppered with small, clear code examples, supplemented in this new edition by practical exercises; it reminds me of my favorite programming book: the K&R (Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C programming language"). It is a multi-level book that always gives something new at every reading.
Its four sections introduce capabilities, concepts and techniques that may surprise even seasoned programmers, especially those using static languages only.
The first section is devoted to the language itself, including not-so-common subjects such as multiple results, first-class functions, closures, iterators and coroutines. The next section shows how to build all sorts of data structures, from simple arrays and lists to packages and objects, using Lua "tables" and the powerful idea of "metatables" that makes the language easily customizable.
The third section introduces the standard libraries (which are actually optional, e.g. in small embedded applications) with special emphasis on the simple but versatile pattern matching capabilities.