Programming in Lua, fourth edition
| Roberto Ierusalimschy (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Product details
- Publisher : Lua.Org (August 1, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 388 pages
- ISBN-10 : 8590379868
- ISBN-13 : 978-8590379867
- Item Weight : 1.52 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.44 x 0.8 x 9.69 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #61,163 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #127 in Computer Programming Languages
- #224 in Programming Languages (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Roberto Ierusalimschy is the leading architect of the Lua programming language, driving its development since its inception in 1993. He is a full professor of Computer Science at PUC-Rio (the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro), where he works with programming-language design and implementation.
Roberto has a M.Sc. Degree and a D.Sc. Degree in Computer Science, both from PUC-Rio. He was a visiting researcher at the University of Waterloo, ICSI, GMD, and UIUC, and a Tinker Professor at Stanford. As a professor at PUC-Rio, Roberto was the advisor of several students that later became influential members of the Lua community. Roberto is also a member of the IFIP Working Group on Language Design.
Customer reviews
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I'm following along, but the author seems to lead us down every obscure and academic avenue available. Mastering LUA may have been a better book title, but I wouldn't have preferred Walking with LUA. The answers to the exercises are not available.
Not a bad book, but a delightful review of LUA's complexities isn't for beginners who want program in LUA.
If you're new to programming, PIL will guide you through fundamental concepts and the examples at the end of each chapter are easy to digest. Lua has an interactive shell making it fun to test the commands as you read.
If you're at all curious about Lua, this book is your definitive guide. The answers to questions about using Lua are intrinsically answered in the way the book is written. For me, the cost of the purchase has been easily outweighed by the time I have saved *not* having to search the Internet (and attempt to infer an answer from an API reference). That advantage lets me get on with writing my IoT platform and learning to script Roblox worlds in Lua with for my son.
The book itself is not bad at all, breezy quick read, excellent for getting the gist. If you are new to programming, this is NOT a good starting point. This book meanders through various topics and is not very good at starting at the beginning. So the examples use operators you have not seen yet and you are left guessing as to the underlying paradigm... Sadly, par for the course in this field. Just put the mysteries on your stack as you read, they will be revealed later!
But hey, I am happy to learn how the original author sees things.
Top reviews from other countries
That said, web searches find 95%+ of the required answers more quickly ...
If you program in Lua then you need this book.
If you program in C then you need this book - using Lua scripting with a C program can give you a huge boost in functionality.
Forth's modern successor - without the RPN.









