Hi Paul,
The Programming in Lua book fourth edition just came out
http://www.lua.org/pil/. I've been programming a long time and I'm reading it cover to cover because the language has so many neat features.
A nice learning tool of lua is you can use it interactively. Just install Lua on your platform of choice and invoke "lua" through a command line. Then you can run basic commands like os.date() to see what happens.
The lua users wiki will be your go-to for examples:
http://lua-users.org/wiki/. I'm still a novice at Lua so I often times need to look up references. I will google "lua gmatch string" for instance. Usually the wiki will be my first click if it comes up.
Other resources you will find is the PIL online (
http://www.lua.org/pil/contents.html), though be careful what version of Lua you are using because the online manual is not current. For an online REFERENCE for all versions, you can go to the Lua manual:
http://www.lua.org/manual/. This is good for reference but not a tool for a novice as you will miss details about the language.
Finally, this mailing list is a great resource. I have had to ask some pretty trivial questions while learning Lua and these guys have been excellent.
Some suggestions:
1) As stated previously, there are a number of features about Lua that are not the same as other software langauges. I highly recommend buying the book. I could have saved myself a lot of time by doing so in the first place
2) If you let the mailing list know what product you are using and what you are trying to do, they may be able to help?
3) Get yourself a good IDE like ZeroBrane. It has a debugger that will allow you to pause your code and inspect values while it is running. It can also help show you the functions available in a module, and suggest functions and parameters for you.
https://studio.zerobrane.com/
Good Luck,
Russ
