Re: Keeping scripts in memory

[Peter Shook <pshook@...>]

anderson wrote:
> I have some scripts that may be ran many times, in one program execution.
> I'd like to keep them in memory (RAM) in the lua complied state. How do I do
> that?

If you are using Lua 5.0 then:

Short answer: use luaL_loadfile or luaL_loadbuffer to load it as a 
function, then use lua_pcall to evaluate it later.

Long answer:

  const char *filename = "x.lua";
  if (luaL_loadfile(L, filename)) {
    fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", lua_tostring(L, -1));
    lua_pop(L, 1);
  }
  /* take func from top of stack and store it in the Registry */
  int func_ref = luaL_ref(L, LUA_REGISTRYINDEX);
  /* now store func_ref some place safe in C */

Later on, you can get it back and call it.

  lua_rawgeti(L, LUA_REGISTRYINDEX, func_ref);
  if (lua_pcall(L, 0, 0, 0)) {
    fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", lua_tostring(L, -1));
    lua_pop(L, 1);
  }

- Peter Shook