New in Lua 5.2

Lua module U198

New in Lua 5.2

Exercises, examples and other material relating to training module U198. This topic is presented on public courses Learning to program in Lua, Lua Programming, Lua Programming

Background

Realease 5.2 of Lua includes a number of enhancements which are included in this module. This module will be included in course notes as a separate section, but the material is covered thoughout the course in an appropriate way for the particular requirements of the delegate group.

Articles and tips on this subject		updated
3690	Changes in Lua 5.2 - Garbage Collection The garbage collection changes aren't coding changes - they will effect the internal efficiency and fix some issues there. Ephemeron tables are somewhat linked as they're providing a solution to a garbage collection issuse that required solution. There's a change to a generational collector at some ...	2012-04-14
3686	The goto statement in Lua In the past there was considerable debate in academia and industry on the merits of the use of goto statements, and indeed Lua didn't have them until release 5.2. Well used in Lua, they can provide an escape from inner loops, jumping to a label using a ::label:: format. For example: for ...	2012-04-07
3683	Weak references in Lua - what are they, and why use them? In programming languages where memory is allocated dynamically (that applies to most of the languages we teach), there has to be a mechanism to gather up memory that is no longer used as the program is running so that it can be re-allocated later within the same program, and that mechanism is usually ...	2012-04-07
3687	Binary / bitwise operations in Lua with the standard bit32 library If you want to do bit manipulation in Lua, you can use the bit32 library (which is loaded as a table) from Lua 5.2, and it's backported to newer Lua 5.1 versions as well. Bit manipulation is particularly useful in applications where data is packed into a series of bytes - in effect an array of booleans. Let's ...	2012-04-06

Examples from our training material

bitwise	The bit32 library
gotolua	Lua goto - introduced in 5.2
wrt	Weak references - set up and practical use

Background information

Some modules are available for download as a sample of our material or under an Open Training Notes License for free download from [here].

Topics covered in this module

Yieldable pcall and metamethods.
Lexical scheme for globals.
Ephemeron tables.
Library for bitwise operations.
Light C functions.
Emergency garbage collector.
Goto statement.
Finalizers for tables.

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