Official website of the Lua language about news get started download documentation community site map português designed and developed at

Lua is very easy to build and install. There are detailed instructions in the package but here is a simple terminal session that downloads the current release of Lua and builds it in common platforms:

To embed Lua into your C or C++ program, you'll need the Lua headers to compile your program and a Lua library to link with it. If you're getting a ready-made Lua package for your platform, you'll probably …

The official definition of the Lua language is its reference manual, which describes the syntax and the semantics of Lua, the standard libraries, and the C API.

Lua is a powerful, efficient, lightweight, embeddable scripting language. It supports several programming styles: procedural, object-oriented, functional, data-driven, and data description.

Lua 5.3 Reference Manual The reference manual is the official definition of the Lua language. For a complete introduction to Lua programming, see the book Programming in Lua.

Dec 22, 2025 · The official definition of the Lua language is its reference manual, which describes the syntax and the semantics of Lua, the standard libraries, and the C API.

If you are using the stand-alone Lua interpreter, all you have to do to run your first program is to call the interpreter (usually named lua) with the name of the text file that contains your program.

Dec 22, 2025 · To see how Lua programs compile to instructions for the Lua virtual machine, visit Lua Bytecode Explorer

Dec 23, 2025 · The evolution of Lua is documented in a paper presented at HOPL III, the Third ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference, in 2007. See also its continuation …