Lua cheat sheet
Semicolons are optional. ~= is not-equals.
Strings are single-quote or double quote, it’s arbitrary.
String contatenation operator is ..
0 and '' are true! Only nil and false are false.
nil is the undefined type, also used to free vars.
A range is begin, end [,step], and ranges include both ends.
If a function has a single parameter that is a string or a table, the parens () are optional.
Return, function call and assignment take lists, and lists can be mismatched in length; unmatched receivers are nil, unmatched senders are discarded.
Tables are it, used for maps and arrays. Array index starts at 1. #table is length of table.
String keys are the default, and you can index with table.key or table[“key”]. Non-string
keys require aray indexing. Can index by anything except nil. Index by value for numbers and
strings but identity for tables - e.g. two successive {} are different tables.
a.x is the same as a[“x”]
Assign nil to a table entry to delete it.
for k,v in pairs(table) is generic-for table iteration. pairs is an iterator function.
ipairs stops at the first non-initialized index.
_G is a table of all globals.
Can assign to a table with a list, uses int keys starting at 1.
Objects are tables. Dog = {} creates a table, which can be used as an object.
Modules are tables.
The : “operator” is a synonym to add self to declarations and uses of object and module functions.
Numeric for: for begin, end, step. For loop variable is local to for loop.
function print(...) - all the arguments are put into an arg table for the function to access, and
arg.n is the number of elements in the table. Use unpack(arg) to unpack into list, e.g. to send to
another function.
f{...} lets you make a function call and simulate named arguments - this actuall gets a single
parameter that is a table. It's really f({…})`.
Creating a new instance of a class requires some metatable magic so that the new table will forward its index operations to the class instance”, which has the methods
``` functin Account:new(o) o = o or {} setmetatable(o, self) self.__index = self return o ``
So, in other words, a:deposit(100) is the same as Account.deposit(a, 100).
Reference
Others have tried to summarize Lua.