Reference manuals

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. For a detailed introduction to the practice of Lua programming, see the book Programming in Lua.

The manual for the latest version of Lua is available in several languages:

5.1: english · português · español · русский

The manuals for previous versions are available in English only:

5.0 · 4.0 · 3.2 · 3.1 · 3.0 · 2.5 · 2.4 · 2.2 · 2.1 · 1.1 · 1.0

Until version 5.0, the reference manual was also distributed in PostScript and PDF. Download a copy here.

The manuals for all released versions of Lua are freely available under the terms of the Lua license.

Last update: Sun Mar 16 17:16:29 BRT 2008