Course Outline

Introduction to Lua

  • A bit of history
  • Lua's goals, features and non-goals
  • Resources of Lua documentation and tutorials
  • Installing the Lua interpreter
  • Setting up and using LuaRocks

Basic syntax and semantics

  • Identifiers
  • Comments, block comments
  • Global variables and enforcing of strictness
  • Local variables
  • Standalone programs, program arguments
  • Compilation units, chunks, expressions, semicolons

Data types and data structures

  • Basic types: nil, boolean, number, string
  • Object types: function, userdata, thread, table
  • References/objects vs. basic values
  • The importance of tables in Lua

Introduction to tables and their versatility

  • Tables as an associative array
  • Tables as numeric arrays, sequences

Basic control structures

  • The if then elseif else end
  • The while loop
  • The repeat loop
  • The simple for loop

Error handling

  • Return values vs exceptions
  • Converting a return value to an exception
  • Converting an exception to a return value
  • Error levels

Example programs

  • Polynomial evaluation
  • Breadth first search
  • Additional exercises

More about functions

  • Named arguments
  • Object-oriented calls
  • Closures
  • Currying
  • Tail calls
  • Multiple assignment and return
  • Varargs

Iterators and co-routines

  • The generic for loop
  • Stateless vs stateful iterators
  • Differences between iterators and co-routines

Metatables and metamethods

  • The set example
  • The __tostring metamethod
  • Arithmetic metamethods
  • The __index, __newindex metamethods
  • The __len metamethod

Modules and packages

  • Using modules
  • Creating modules
  • Organizing modules into packages

Object-oriented programming

  • The building blocks of OOP in Lua
  • Examples

Discussion on more advanced language features

  • Weak tables
  • Finalizers
  • Compilation, eval, loading

Requirements

Familiarity with at least one other programming language. Programming experience. Optionally if you have familiarity with other scripting languages, that will make it easier to understand Lua.

  14 Hours
 

Related Courses

Combined C/C++, JAVA and Web Application Security

  28 Hours

Advanced Java Security

  21 Hours

Combined JAVA, PHP and Web Application Security

  28 Hours

Standard Java Security

  14 Hours

Java and Web Application Security

  21 Hours

Advanced Java, JEE and Web Application Security

  28 Hours

Related Categories