Welcome to your first Lua script! In this section, we will guide you through writing and running a simple Lua script. By the end of this lesson, you will have a basic understanding of how to create and execute Lua scripts.

Before writing your first script, ensure that you have Lua installed on your system. If you haven't set up Lua yet, refer to the previous section Setting Up the Lua Environment.

Let's start with a simple "Hello, World!" program. This is a traditional first program that prints "Hello, World!" to the console.

Code Example

Create a new file named hello.lua and open it in your text editor. Enter the following code:

Explanation

• -- This is a comment in Lua: This line is a comment. Comments are ignored by the Lua interpreter and are used to explain the code.
• print("Hello, World!"): This function prints the string "Hello, World!" to the console.

To run your Lua script, open your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the directory where your hello.lua file is located. Then, execute the following command:

You should see the following output:

The print function in Lua outputs the specified string to the console. In this case, it prints "Hello, World!".

Modify the hello.lua script to print your name instead of "Hello, World!".

Solution

Replace [Your Name] with your actual name. Save the file and run it using the same command as before:

You should see the output:

Extend your script to print multiple lines. For example, print "Hello, World!" on the first line and "Welcome to Lua programming!" on the second line.

Solution

Save the file and run it:

You should see the output:

• Syntax Errors: Ensure that you use the correct syntax. Lua is case-sensitive, so print must be in lowercase.
• File Naming: Make sure your file has the .lua extension.
• Running the Script: Ensure you are in the correct directory when running the script from the terminal.

In this lesson, you learned how to write and run a simple Lua script. You created a "Hello, World!" program, modified it to print your name, and extended it to print multiple lines. These exercises helped you get comfortable with the basic process of writing and executing Lua scripts.

In the next section, we will dive deeper into Lua's basic syntax and structure, which will provide a foundation for more complex programming concepts.