Lua Fundamentals Training Course

Introduction to Lua

• A brief historical overview
• Lua's design goals, key features, and non-goals
• Accessing Lua documentation and tutorials
• Installing the Lua interpreter
• Configuring and utilizing LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

• Identifiers
• Standard and block comments
• Global variables and enforcing strict mode
• Local variable scope
• Standalone programs and handling program arguments
• Compilation units, chunks, expressions, and semicolon usage

Data types and data structures

• Primitive types: nil, boolean, number, and string
• Reference types: function, userdata, thread, and 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 with if, then, elseif, else, and end
• The while loop
• The repeat loop
• The simple for loop

Error handling

• Comparing return values and exceptions
• Converting return values into exceptions
• Converting exceptions into return values
• Managing error levels

Example programs

• Evaluating polynomials
• Implementing breadth-first search
• Supplementary exercises

More about functions

• Utilizing named arguments
• Object-oriented method calls
• Closures
• Currying techniques
• Tail calls
• Multiple assignment and multiple return values
• Variable-length arguments (varargs)

Iterators and co-routines

• The generic for loop mechanism
• Distinguishing between stateless and stateful iterators
• Key differences between iterators and co-routines

Metatables and metamethods

• Implementing a set data structure
• The __tostring metamethod
• Arithmetic metamethods
• The __index and __newindex metamethods
• The __len metamethod

Modules and packages

• Consuming existing modules
• Developing custom modules
• Organizing modules into packages

Object-oriented programming

• Core OOP building blocks in Lua
• Practical examples

Discussion on more advanced language features

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