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Lua ○˒|Definition|1st|20260124205314-00-⌔
Lua
Lua (/ˈluː.ə/, LOO-ə; from Portuguese: lua [ˈlu(w)ɐ] meaning moon) is a lightweight, high-level, multi-paradigm programming language designed mainly for embedded use in applications.1 Lua is cross-platform software, since the interpreter of compiled bytecode is written in ANSI C,2 and Lua has a relatively simple C application programming interface (API) to embed it into applications.3
Lua originated in 1993 as a language for extending software applications to meet the increasing demand for customization at the time. It provided the basic facilities of most procedural programming languages, but more complicated or domain-specific features were not included; rather, it included mechanisms for extending the language, allowing programmers to implement such features. As Lua was intended to be a general embeddable extension language, the designers of Lua focused on improving its speed, portability, extensibility and ease-of-use in development.
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
Ierusalimschy, Roberto; de Figueiredo, Luiz Henrique; Filho, Waldemar Celes (June 1996). “Lua—An Extensible Extension Language”. Software: Practice and Experience. 26 (6): 635–652. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-024X(199606)26:6<635::AID-SPE26>3.0.CO;2-P. S2CID 61066194. Retrieved 24 October 2015. ↩
“About Lua”. Lua.org. Retrieved 26 May 2026. ↩
Takhteyev, Yuri (21 April 2013). “From Brazil to Wikipedia”. Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 25 April 2013. ↩
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