Re: how best to get started?

[Doug Rogers <rogers@...>]

On Friday 02 April 2004 15:01, Stewart, Joseph wrote:

> On behalf of the rest of the Lua list, apologies to you Richard. ...
> This list is usually a friendly and helpful place.

Seconds from me.

My first use of Lua was to take the lua.c that comes with the distribution and 
copy it into the main file of one of my C test programs. I had previously 
implemented my own command set. I looked at the sample code (this was before 
the Lua Book) in order to write an interface to one of my objects. I turned 
on readline and history, which I had also coded separately because I was 
using it in a bootloader that lacked most higher-level libraries. I was 
tickled pink when it worked almost immediately. (For those unfamiliar with 
the term, 'tickled pink' means 'happy in a surprising way'.)

I found that I no longer needed most of the old commands I had written because 
I could write their functionality just as easily directly at the commandline. 
Anything that was more complex I put into a script file to be loaded when 
needed. That allowed me to see and to modify those scripts without having to 
recompile the program, then go through the process of reloading my test 
state.

That's how I started using Lua. If you plan to use it for interfacing to other 
code - as an extension language - then it makes sense to start in some 
similar way, by building up interfaces to the code objects with which you are 
concerned.

Good luck!

Doug Rogers