ctypes- equivalent in Lua?

[bb <bb-543437@...>]

There is some ingenious library available for Python called ctype, or 
say it is provided with the language as a standard and it only needs to 
be imported.  I have checked the Lua documentation and the Lua mailing 
list to find something equivalent powerful - no success.

Well, there is the exchange possible via stack but I think that is not 
the philosopher's stone. I found the alien extension 
(http://alien.luaforge.net/) as well, but I found nothing comparable to 
ctypes. ctypes for instance allows to create C datatypes from within 
Python by c-char, c_byte, c_int and so on. In my first check of the docs 
I could not find any mechanism for passing parameters by reference, say 
pointers. May be I did not find the essentials.

Is there any library I have not jet found for such powerful programming 
techniqes in Lua? Thanks for providing any information.

Best regards

BB