Lua Quick Start Guide

Operator precedence

Much like math, Lua has the concept of operator precedence. In math, 5 + 2 * 10 equals 25 because multiplication happens before addition. Lua behaves the same way; it even uses parentheses to prioritize one group of equations before another. To see this in action, try running the following code snippet:

print ( 5 + 2 * 10 ) -- prints 25print ( (5 + 2) * 10 ) -- prints 70

Take note of how the output is different; this is because Lua follows mathematical precedence for arithmetic operators. Order of precedence is listed in this table from higher priority (first row) to lower priority (last row):

^
not	#	- (unary)
*	/	%
+	-
..
<	>	<=	>=	~=	==
and
or