Re: Back to books

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> There is a link to a book (draft) on http://www.lua.org/. I 
> learned lua using this book and I thought that it is a good 
> book. 
> 
> Will this book be updated for lua 5? Will it be finished?

Yes. Actually, this is almost done!

The book is completely updated for 5.0 (sorry 4.0 users). Apart from
coroutines and weak tables, its major parts are all written. Really soon
(1~2 weeks) I will start to release some copies (Gavin should get one of
these copies, if he keeps his offer ;-).

Currently the book has ~220 pages. I imagine it will have ~250 pages when
ready. Its list of contents is at the end of this message.

Now I am starting to plan how to distribute the final version.
The obvious option is to publish it, but for that I must find a
publisher. (Suggestions? Contacts??). Other option would be to sell it
eletronically by a small fee (I do not plan to get rich with the book,
but it would be OK to get something from it). I am still not sure whether
a freely available version of a draft could interfere with those plans.

-- Roberto


*** Current Book Contents
(most chapters have 5~10 pages)

 Introduction

part 1: The Language
 Getting Started
 Types and Values 
 Expressions
 Statements
 Functions  
 More About Functions
 Iterators and The Generic for
 Compilation, Execution, and Errors
 Coroutines (** to be written)
 Complete Examples

part 2: Tables and Objects  
 Data Structures
 Data Files and Persistence
 Metatables and Metamethods
 The Global Table
 Packages
 Object-Oriented Programming
 Weak Tables (** to be written)

part 3: The Standard Libraries
 The Mathematical Library
 The Table Library
 The String Library
 The I/O Library
 The Operating System Library
 The Debug Library

part 4: The C API  
 An Overview of the C API
 Extending your Application
 Calling C from Lua
 User-defined Types in C
 Managing External Resources