Lua Quick Start Guide

Working with the C API

The Lua C API is efficient and lightweight. There are a few important header files we need to be familiar with before writing any C code. These files are the following:

• lua.h: Provides all the functions needed to work with Lua. All functions in this file are prefixed with lua_.
• luaxlib.h: Uses the public API exposed in lua.h to provide higher levels of abstraction for common tasks. All functions in this file are prefixed with luaL_.
• lualib.h: Provides the standard Lua libraries. All functions in this file are also prefixed with luaL_.

Lua does not allocate any global memory. Instead it stores all of its states in a structure called lua_State. This structure contains everything that the Lua runtime needs to operate. ...