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Reference manual

The official definition of the Lua language is its reference manual, which is available online and also as a book:

Lua 5.1 Reference Manual
by R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes
Lua.org, August 2006
ISBN 85-903798-3-3

Also available in Portuguese

, Spanish

, and Russian

The manuals for all released versions are available online.

Books

Programming in Lua (second edition)
by Roberto Ierusalimschy
Lua.org, March 2006
ISBN 85-903798-2-5

This is a detailed and authoritative introduction to all aspects of Lua programming, by Lua's chief architect. The first edition is available online. (The first edition was aimed at Lua 5.0; the second edition updates the text to Lua 5.1 and brings substantial new material.)

Programming in Lua is also available in German and Korean:

Programmieren mit Lua
von Roberto Ierusalimschy
Open Source Press, September 2006
ISBN 3-937514-22-8

Programming in Lua
by Roberto Ierusalimschy
Insight, June 2007
ISBN 9788991268302
[buy at Kangcom.com]

There are also books about Lua written by other authors:

Introductory Lua programming , by Yutaka Ueno (in Japanese).
Softbank Creative, December 2007, ISBN 4797342722.
Beginning Lua Programming, by Kurt Jung and Aaron Brown.
Wrox, February 2007, ISBN 0470069171.
Game Development with Lua, by Paul Schuytema and Mark Manyen.
Charles River Media, August 2005, ISBN 1584504048.
Game Programming with Python, Lua, and Ruby, by Tom Gutschmidt.
Course Technology PTR, December 2003, ISBN 1592000770.

Technical documentation

For more technical information, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and a set of old seminar slides. For detailed technical information on specific topics, see our series of Lua Technical Notes and the wiki at lua-users.org, specially the tutorial. You may also browse the source code.

Papers

There are many papers and theses related to Lua. Here are the main ones written by the Lua team. See also the Lablua publications.

The main academic paper about Lua discusses the philosophy behind its design:

R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes,
Lua - an extensible extension language,
Software: Practice & Experience 26 #6 (1996) 635-652. [doi]
This paper was awarded the first prize (technological category) in the II Compaq Award for Research and Development in Computer Science in 1997. This award was a joint venture of Compaq Computer in Brazil, the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Brazilian Academy of Sciences.

For details on the implementation of Lua, see

R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes,
The implementation of Lua 5.0,
Journal of Universal Computer Science 11 #7 (2005) 1159-1176. [jucs]

For a complete history of Lua till 2006, see

R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes,
The evolution of Lua,
Proceedings of ACM HOPL III (2007). [doi]

For a history of Lua till 2001, see

R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes,
The evolution of an extension language: a history of Lua,
Proceedings of V Brazilian Symposium on Programming Languages (2001) B-14--B-28. [ps]

The first paper describing Lua still has some historical interest:

L. H. de Figueiredo, R. Ierusalimschy, W. Celes,
The design and implementation of a language for extending applications,
Proceedings of XXI Brazilian Seminar on Software and Hardware (1994) 273-283. [ps]

For an expository article, see

L. H. de Figueiredo, R. Ierusalimschy, W. Celes,
Lua: an extensible embedded language,
Dr. Dobb's Journal 21 #12 (Dec 1996) 26-33. [DDJ]

Last update: Thu Mar 13 20:16:27 BRT 2008