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Table of Contents
luac - Lua compiler
luac [ options ] [ filenames ]
luac
is the Lua compiler. It translates programs written in the Lua programming
language into binary files that can be later loaded and executed.
The main
advantages of precompiling chunks are: faster loading, protecting source
code from accidental user changes, and off-line syntax checking.
Pre-compiling
does not imply faster execution because in Lua chunks are always compiled
into bytecodes before being executed. luac simply allows those bytecodes
to be saved in a file for later execution.
Pre-compiled chunks are not necessarily
smaller than the corresponding source. The main goal in pre-compiling is
faster loading.
The binary files created by luac are portable only among
architectures with the same word size and byte order.
luac produces a single
output file containing the bytecodes for all source files given. By default,
the output file is named luac.out, but you can change this with the -o option.
In the command line, you can mix text files containing Lua source and binary
files containing precompiled chunks. This is useful to combine several precompiled
chunks, even from different (but compatible) platforms, into a single precompiled
chunk.
You can use ’-’ to indicate the standard input as a source file and
’--’ to signal the end of options (that is, all remaining arguments will be
treated as files even if they start with ’-’).
The internal format of the binary
files produced by luac is likely to change when a new version of Lua is
released. So, save the source files of all Lua programs that you precompile.
Options must be separate.
- -l
- produce a listing of the compiled bytecode
for Lua’s virtual machine. Listing bytecodes is useful to learn about Lua’s
virtual machine. If no files are given, then luac loads luac.out and lists
its contents.
- -o file
- output to file, instead of the default luac.out. (You
can use ’-’ for standard output, but not on platforms that open standard output
in text mode.) The output file may be a source file because all files are
loaded before the output file is written. Be careful not to overwrite precious
files.
- -p
- load files but do not generate any output file. Used mainly for
syntax checking and for testing precompiled chunks: corrupted files will
probably generate errors when loaded. Lua always performs a thorough integrity
test on precompiled chunks. Bytecode that passes this test is completely
safe, in the sense that it will not break the interpreter. However, there
is no guarantee that such code does anything sensible. (None can be given,
because the halting problem is unsolvable.) If no files are given, then
luac loads luac.out and tests its contents. No messages are displayed if
the file passes the integrity test.
- -s
- strip debug information before writing
the output file. This saves some space in very large chunks, but if errors
occur when running a stripped chunk, then the error messages may not contain
the full information they usually do. For instance, line numbers and names
of local variables are lost.
- -v
- show version information.
- luac.out
- default
output file
lua(1)
http://www.lua.org/
Error messages should be self explanatory.
L. H. de Figueiredo, R. Ierusalimschy and W. Celes
Table of Contents