5 Lua is a programming language originally designed for extending applications,
6 but also frequently used as a general-purpose, stand-alone language.
7 Lua combines simple procedural syntax (similar to Pascal) with powerful
8 data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible
9 semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, interpreted from bytecodes, and has
10 automatic memory management, making it ideal for configuration, scripting,
11 and rapid prototyping.
13 Lua is implemented as a small library of C functions, written in ANSI C,
14 and compiles unmodified in all known platforms. The implementation goals
15 are simplicity, efficiency, portability, and low embedding cost.
17 Lua was awarded the first prize (technological category) in the Second Compaq
18 Award for Research and Development in Computer Science in 1997. This award
19 is a joint venture of Compaq Computer in Brazil, the Brazilian Ministry of
20 Science and Technology, and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.
24 Lua is freely available for both academic and commercial purposes and
25 can be downloaded from the sites below. See COPYRIGHT for details.
27 Home page: http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/lua/
28 http://csg.uwaterloo.ca/~lhf/lua/
29 In Brazil: ftp://ftp.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/pub/lua/lua.tar.gz
30 In Canada: ftp://csg.uwaterloo.ca/pub/lhf/lua/lua.tar.gz
31 In the US: ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/languages/lua/lua.tar.gz
32 In Germany: ftp://ftp.uni-trier.de/pub/languages/lua/lua.tar.gz
33 In Germany: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/languages/lua/lua.tar.gz
34 In Greece: ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/lang/lua/lua.tar.gz
40 * Contacting the authors
41 ----------------------
42 Lua has been designed and implemented by Waldemar Celes,
43 Roberto Ierusalimschy and Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo.
44 They can be contacted by email at lua@tecgraf.puc-rio.br.
46 Send your comments, bug reports and anything else to lua@tecgraf.puc-rio.br.
47 For reporting bugs, try also the mailing list: lua-l@tecgraf.puc-rio.br.
48 To subscribe to this list, send "subscribe lua-l YOUR-NAME" to
49 listproc@tecgraf.puc-rio.br in the body of the message (not in the subject).
51 Lua has been developed at TeCGraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group
52 of PUC-Rio (the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil).
53 TeCGraf is a laboratory of the Department of Computer Science.
54 Dozens of industrial products developed by TeCGraf use Lua.