Announcing Lua, a language for extending applications

This is the first public release of Lua.


* What is Lua?
    Lua is a simple, yet powerful, language for extending applications.
    Lua has been developed by TeCGraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group
    of PUC-Rio, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
    Dozens of industrial products developed by TeCGraf use Lua.


* Some features of Lua
    Lua has a simple, pascal-like, syntax.
    Variables need no declaration.
    Lua has powerful data description constructs.
    Functions can receive a variable number of arguments and can return multiple
    values.
    Lua programs are compiled into bytecodes, which are then interpreted to
    simulate a virtual machine.
    Lua is written in ANSI C and is completely portable.


* Installing
    To make, simply type domake.
    If make succeeds, you get an interpreter in ./bin/lua.
    The libraries are in ./lib. The include files are in ./include.
    You don't need the other directories for development.
    There is documentation in ./doc and tests in ./test.
    The documentation includes a reference manual and an article on the
    design and implementation of Lua.
    This distribution is biased towards SunOS 4 with gcc but it is simple to
    change the Makefiles for other systems.


* Legal matters
    Lua is not in the public domain; TeCGraf keeps its copyright.
    Nevertheless, Lua is freely available for academic purposes by anonymous ftp
    at ftp.icad.puc-rio.br:/pub/lua/lua-1.1.tar.Z.
    For commercial purposes, please contact us.


* Contacting the authors
    Send your comments, bug reports and anything else to lhf@icad.puc-rio.br.
    Please send me email if you download Lua so that we can know how far it goes.


--
Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo email: lhf@icad.puc-rio.br
TeCGraf-Grupo de Tecnologia em Computacao Grafica, ITS, PUC-Rio
Rua Marques de Sao Vicente 225 voice: +55 21 529-9424
22453-900 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil fax: +55 21 511-5645
--

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