Talk:Lua (programming language)/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Baldur's Gate

I am pretty sure Lua was only present in the original Baldur's Gate engine. Even then it wasn't used as a part of the actual game or content. It was only used afaik as a debugging aid during development and as a cheat/debugging console. Here and here are sources to verify the info.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.153.117.118 (talk • contribs) 22:47:53, 15 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Time for disambig page?

Perhaps it's time to move this article to another page, I recommend Lua (Programming Language). I just added another "other possible meaning" for Lua...if it's going to be moved perhaps it should be done soon before the number of "other possible meanings" gets out of hand...I can think of three other possible meanings for the word in the context of Oceania, and that's just me... TShilo12 23:40, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. However, if you want to move it I'd like to recommend Lua programming language, as this is the common naming in the programming languages category. -Nikai 14:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, uppercase "Programming Language" would only be plausible if that were formally part of Lua's proper name. Suffix of "programming language" without parens is not the usual for WP, but it's been the agreed practice for languages for quite a while. Stan 13:20, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd have to agree as "Lua Language" redirects here instead of going to the language of the Lua people of Laos. I'm not sure if the page about that language ever existed, but I managed to get here via the hypertext in the "languages" section on the "Lua People" article page. Thus if both "Lua Language" and "Lua (Programming Language)" head here it should theoretically be alright to just give "Lua Language" to the article about the language of said people.

--Maikeru Go (talk) 22:04, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Internals

I've wrote very simple "Internals" section. The question is if to leave it simple (more or less in a way it is now) or to write more detailed description, for example some extract from The implementation of Lua 5.0 article? Zigmar 14:33, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think more is probably better. If you're up for it, I say go for it. We should probably add to Lua's syntax and semantics though, as well as to how Lua is connected to other languages, just to keep the article balanced. Makkuro 21:39, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually I'm not completely sure. After all, it just encyclopedia article, not reference manual. But anyway, current section is very basic, and it should be expanded to contain more detailed information. And I agree that more detailed syntax description may be included, maybe along with some examples, i.e. using tables as objects. But what to do mean by "how it is connected to other languages"? Zigmar 08:50, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Derivatives

There are a number of Lua derivatives or Lua-influenced languages which should be mentioned, such as LuaPlus, Squirrel, GameMonkey, Io (programming language) etc.

It might also be good to mention some of the larger add-ons to Lua. Part of the success of Lua has to deal with its ability to integrate into C code, such as addons link LuaCOM --Darkain Dragoon 06:29, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Added LuaPlus to navbox/infobox. LuaCOM should go to navbox, but is not worth mentioning there as I believe. GameMonkey goes to infobox as influenced by Lua. --4th-otaku (talk) 20:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

PSP programming

May we mention that Lua has been ported to the PSP's homebrew department? This is pretty important, as the homebrew "scene" features a fair bit of Lua programs. The official website is http://luaplayer.org. May I mention that if anyone wishes to test it on their PSP they will need a version 1.5.

I personally think that Lua for PSP (Lua Player) should be removed from the External links section on this article. It is already mentioned in the Applications section, which includes an internal wiki link instead of an external link. Any further information on this specific project would probably be better suited in its own article focusing specifically on PSP related features, instead of in the general purpose Lua article. --Darkain Dragoon 06:22, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

External links

Let's try to keep the external links to sites about Lua as a language rather than to programs written for Lua or in Lua. In addition to probably being useless (or worse, confusing) to many readers, you can see the "me too!" aspect in the links to several C++/Lua binding projects. --Mrwojo 17:52, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Disagreed. Poppafuze (talk) 04:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

What?

What does it mean that link below to www.yindo.com?

If it really matters, we should at least explain why... --DMIax 18:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Apparently Yindo Technology (http://web.archive.org/web/20050210071652/http://www.yindo.com/) was a web platform that used Lua language [1].
For some funny reason, its former website http://www.yindo.com/ now points to an outdated, archived version of an unrelated musician website, using the Internet Archive as storage for remote loading.
Anyway, the Wayback Machine may give you an idea of what used to be on old Yindo.com. --HYC 06:47, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

May now not. "We're sorry, access to http://yindo.com/* has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt." [2]. But there was some duscussions on Yindo in the lua-l [3] --4th-otaku (talk) 10:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Usage example

I would personally appreciate an example of object-oriented code. If it takes up too much space, then nevermind. -SharkD 14:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I actually think that the article has too much code in it and that it would be improved by moving some of the examples to a separate article that discusses Lua Syntax. An object oriented example in the spawned article would be appropriate, though.71.214.223.133 (talk) 02:07, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

C/C++

Lua was designed to extend or be embedded in C and/or C++, or other languages via C/C++. It's written in C. Yet the only references to C or C++ are in the "External links". --Wfaxon 09:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Derivative example

I've just added a quick derivative example, but am not sure if it's fair use or not. The example appears in "Programming in Lua", but was the best simple example that I could think of. Not exactly sure how to paraphrase/put in to own words code... so if anyone knows whether it's allowed or not (most of the book is copied from wikis, eg the main lua manual - so it's probably not copyrighted) or can think of a better example, please change/delete/replace it =). I think it's worth having an example showing 'near-local' variables - they're a concept not in many other languages, namely c (statics are quite different) and the variants. Themania 14:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Aren't those called closures? And I agree, we should think up a slightly more practical example. MisterPhyrePhox 00:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Quite right, in fact I was sure I'd typed that... apparently not though. I've reuploaded it, I think improving the Engrish ;) a bit. Still haven't been struck with a practical example though - although they're used quite a bit, it's hard to think of an example that's clear and concise. Would a sort function be clearer? Eg maybe a function that you can pass a table, and it'll return a function that you can call whenever you want to sort it? -scratches head- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Themania (talk • contribs) 09:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC).

Okay, I made a simpler example, similar to the example used to introduce currying in most functional languages. Its still not very practical. I felt like the math in your derivative function was a bit daunting and perhaps distracting for an introductory example, but if you want to re-add it, please go ahead. MisterPhyrePhox 17:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Cleaned

I have cleaned this article. The article was not looking up to the mark. Do your best in adding information. have cleaned up the games,application and links. --SkyWalker 08:38, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Two things. One, I appreciate your willingness to clean up the article, and I (mostly) agree with your removals. Two however, all of your edits are marked as "minor" edits. And they're all very substantial. Please don't do that in the future. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Korval (talk • contribs) 04:01, 18 February 2007 (UTC).

Too much was removed. Should have been flagged for a bit before the rampant purge. Plenty of people did their best in adding information. Don't know what mark that didn't look up to. Poppafuze (talk) 04:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

TIOBE Programming Community Index

From there, "June Headline: Lua only 0.003% away from top 20 position". It is getting popular! Mathmo ^Talk 02:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. Integrated into the Development section. --4th-otaku (talk) 01:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Book and How-To

I propose the inserted banner saying this needs to be less of a how-to should be removed. Most of the article is factual but it is after all a programming language. If you want to know something about a language you need to have a quick look at it's feel. In this particular case, a table-based language, examples are the easiest way to explain what that means. The factorial example is fairly canonical: see Haskell for example. The best way to clean this is to refactor the examples into a "language elements" section where each subsection show an example whose purpose is to explain an element (looping, tables, file-io, ...) rather than examples of "hello world" and so on. THose can just be by products of the breakdown into elements. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.165.108.189 (talk) 21:01, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree. I am also a coder and wanted to answer this question: "What is this language, how is it used, and does anyone use it?" In one article its all here. The links to the games were good, since it seems like its used heavily in that space. If the WikiEditors at Wikipedia want that section shorter, then one could chop some of them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.141.31.1 (talk) 14:04, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I second that. The code examples actually make for a very informative article (factual). To the layman it may seem like a lesson, but to coder it's a factual example of the language ... not a "lesson". I'm feeling bold ... banner removed. DJ Barney (talk) 22:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Blitzkrieg Uses Lua

Hello, I would like to make it known that the game Blitzkrieg uses the Lua language, although I do not have anyway to verify it. The blitzkrieg portal at http://bkportal.com/ features downloads for learning the language, and the SCITE editor available there allows editing of the Game's Lua scripts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spyder imagine (talk • contribs) 03:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Blitzkrieg (video game) has been categorized as Lua-scriptable & Lua-scripted. --4th-otaku (talk) 08:27, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Cut Out Link

The link was alredy included in ==External links==.75.155.88.113 (talk) 02:09, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

LUA

LUA as am acronym: We could have it mean Language's Unknown Acronym (or Unsepcified) :P 29 April 2008 (GMT+1) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.94.203 (talk) 13:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Cutting down the list

1) Is it the time to create List of games that use Lua? People tend to add their favorite games again. Would it be more convenient if all of this would go not to /dev/null, but to a separate dedicated page?

2) Korval, your notion of "notable" is somewhat strange... At least STALKER, Guild 2, nmap, lighttpd, Monotone is more notable to me than some of those you have kept.

--4th-otaku (talk) 08:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My definition of notable is not strange; it simply isn't esotheric. I removed the ones that are not suitably recent, popular, and/or well-known. This page is not a place to advertise little-known games or applications. I may have removed a few too many applications (Witcher, for example, is newer than I thought), but that's no reason to revert the entire change. And there's no need for a separate page. Lua.org has a well-updated list page; this list in this article is merely to show that Lua gets quite a bit of use. Korval (talk) 00:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the speedy reversion. Here are some matters you might have missed.

• nmap is incredible famous (at least for that sort of software, plain and boring network security scanner). It is not just a scanner, it's a culture.
• STALKER is a famous & long-awaited FPS/RPG (has been in development from 2001 until 2007; got 9th prize in Wired's Vaporware'06 award [4]).
• lighttpd is a web server on which SourceForge.net, YouTube, Gizmodo, The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, other popular sites and numerous local ISPs are running (currently in top 4 of the Netcraft Web Server Survey [5]); its philosophy is somewhat similar to Lua's.
• for Monotone see Monotone (software)#Monotone as Git inspiration; besides that, it is the only known SCM that supports Lua scripting. It might be very notable for some open-source software developers.

I also propose that we not remove any items from the list without picking them to the Category:Lua software (or some of its sub-cats) — consider the Applications section as one of the Lists that should be categories. Newcomers are (and will be) constantly adding new items here (Roblox has been re-added again by someone; Cortex Command has been included just now). If they would find their 'object of zeal' tagged as "Lua-scriptable" or "Lua-scripted" they will more likely not do that. We can also place some more specific guidance for editors (e.g. "tag before you list; don't list if already tagged; all red links will be removed speedily") into this section. With all of this, a categorized but not listed Lua software article can act as a straightforward flag that we are notified of its relation to Lua, but don't realized why it should be on the list.

--4th-otaku (talk) 14:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

That it may not be possible to prevent well-meaning editors from tacking on their favourite programs does not mean that this is an optimal state of affairs. As far as I'm concerned, any entry on the "notable uses" list which isn't accompanied by a reliable secondary source noting that LUa was specifically chosen due to X feature of the language should be removed right now. This article is not a trophy-board to hang Lua's victories on. Long lists of unverifiable material are inappropriate for any article, even a list article. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:13, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I suppose every programmer that have chosen Lua to embed have done that due to some feature(s) of the language. So, this list just mentions notable programs/companies which use Lua, no more than that. The fact of using Lua is pretty simple to verify; I think it's not worth to bloat the article with references with none or little encyclopaedic value. (Am I wrong?) Besides that, the list itself works as a kind of reference — its sole purpose is to support the statement that Lua is a popular language. (Should we try to implement a better support, or should we just drop it?) --4th-otaku (talk) 16:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, something somewhat similar to that you've proposed is already done by Lua.org and lua-users at LuaUses. You've removed this link from the article, but have you followed it first? --4th-otaku (talk) 16:15, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

New categories

(Parent: Software by programming language) Category Lua software not found

(Parent: Scripting languages) Lua programming language no subcategories

--4th-otaku (talk) 10:17, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Criticism of Lua

The main page should include a 'criticism of Lua' section.

Ratecrash (talk) 17:02, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't. See WP:CSECTION. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 16:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:CSECTION says that it is "a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. Thus references or links to this page should not describe it as "policy"", and it gives both pros and cons for including a criticism section. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 03:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Assessment

I've given it a B from a C. It certainly is written well. -download | sign! 22:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

First register-based VM in wide use?

Erlang has a register-based VM, and while I have no idea which of lua and erlang are in wider use. Erlang is certainly in wide use and some 5 years older than lua. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.243.171.93 (talk) 21:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

According to TIOBE [6], Erlang is still not so widely cited on the Web as Lua. Wikipedia currently renders only 6 articles of Erlang-based software (Category:Erlang programming language). Should there be more? --4th-otaku (talk) 01:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

What is a "pure vm?" There's no article on wikipedia defining the term. 128.8.138.158 (talk) 17:22, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Memory footprint and execution speed

I wish this article mentioned Lua's very small memory footprint relative to most scripting languages, and it's relativly fast execution speed. Those are its main draws. 207.62.246.30 (talk) 23:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, agreed, they should be expounded. I'm a LUA newbie and those two reasons are what attracted me over many other 'competitors'. From comparisions I've seen with other dynamic languages (Python, Ruby), it's quite fast. 71.214.223.133 (talk) 02:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

List of applications

I suggest moving the list of applications to its own article, much like List of Python software. SharkD (talk) 07:50, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Seems like it's not make much sense to spawn another instance of LuaAddons here. This kind of lists is better when they are single. The contrary leads to discrepancies and problems for users (doubling the work for look up or add an entry).

The sole excuse to keep up the list is to support the statement that Lua is a popular language. If this ever become more or less undisputable (as it is in the game industry) we would just drop it.

Nevertheless, feel free to move it to a List of Lua software at anytime. --4th-otaku (talk) 15:45, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Archiving

Does anyone object to me setting up automatic archiving for this page using MiszaBot? Unless otherwise agreed, I would set it to archive threads that have been inactive for 30 days.--Oneiros (talk) 13:48, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done--Oneiros (talk) 21:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

io.write("Hello World!\n")

Is it not complicate the article? It seems like it does not illustrate any essential feature of the language, just explains the parameter format of two particular functions. --4th-otaku (talk) 22:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I've removed it. --4th-otaku (talk) 21:39, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Lua is widely used in the video game industry

"Lua is widely used in the video game industry. " please give citation for it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.78.217.151 (talk) 15:00, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The source engine mod, Garry's Mod relies heavily on Lua, you could find a citation on their site --96.229.146.188 (talk) 22:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Battle for Wesnoth uses LUA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.67.190 (talk) 19:57, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Lua is strongly typed

AndyClaw (talk) 23:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC) This is what I have concluded: Lua, like Python, is dynamically typed, so variables do not have types but values do. For dynamically typed scripting languages, type checking is done at run time. Python is strongly typed, meaning that all type errors are detected. For example, a number cannot be concatenated to a string using the ‘+’ operator. Is Lua strongly typed? Compare the following set of expressions:

Lua:
> = 1 + 1
2
> = "1" + "1"
2
> = "1" + 1
2
> = 1 .. 1
11
> = "1" .. "1"
11
> = "1" .. 1
11

Python:
>>>> 1 + 1
2
>>> "1" + "1"
'11'
>>> "1" + 1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: Can't convert 'int' object to str implicitly
>>> "1" + str(1)
'11'
>>> 1 + int("1")
2

In Python the same ‘+’ operator is used for arithmetic and string concatenation, whereas in Lua there is a unique string concatenation operator. This means that in Lua there is no type ambiguity to be checked for when performing addition and concatenation between numbers and strings. The ‘+’ operator always performs addition, and the ‘..’ operator always performs concatenation. The implicit conversion from one type to another so that an operation can take place is called coercion. Lua uses coercion between numbers and strings in any context where one type and not the other is expected. The result is not ambiguous because the operand or parameter is always expected to be either a string or a number. Lua does not use coercion between any other types. Because string-numeric coercion is the only exception to strong type checking in Lua, it can still be classified as strongly typed.

Stuff removed from Boolean data type article

The following section was removed from the article Boolean data type:
begin removed text

---

---

Lua defines a boolean type which can be either true or false as of version 5.0. In addition to the value false, the special value nil (of type nil) also evaluates to false in logical expressions. In versions prior to 5.0, only the value nil evaluated to false (and conditional expressions which were false resulted in the value nil being returned). The usefulness of the values true and false are limited in certain situations because the logical operators and and or return one of their arguments as the result instead of the value true or false. This construct allows logical operations in Lua to act similar to C's Ternary Operator, ?:

local a, b = 1, 2;

local function isTrue(condition, message)
   print((message or "<nothing> (which becomes 'nil')") .. " is " .. (condition and "TRUE" or "FALSE"))
end

-- All of the below display "TRUE"
isTrue(true, "true")
isTrue(0, "0")
isTrue(1, "1")
isTrue("Foo", "Foo")
isTrue(a == a, "a == a")

-- All of the below display "FALSE"
isTrue(false, "false")
isTrue(nil, "nil")
isTrue()
isTrue(a == b, "a == b")
isTrue(c, "c")
isTrue(a == c, "a == c")

---

---

end removed text
Is there a place for this text in the Lua-related articles? Perhaps in the Wikibook? Thanks, and all the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 23:43, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you could state why it was removed? That isn't very clear to me. Jhertel (talk) 15:53, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

ISO C vague?

I will remove the "[vague]" from the statement "Lua is cross-platform since it is written in ISO C", because I can find no place here in the Talk section where it is mentioned why someone put the "[vague]" mark there, and it does not seem clear to me why it is vague. I believe a mark like that should be clarified in the Talk section if it isn't completely obvious why it is vague. Jhertel (talk) 15:36, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I can see that there are at least 4 standards of ISO C. But I also guess that when someone just writes "ISO C" or "standard C" or "ANSI C", they must mean the latest version of the standard at any time. In this case and at this point C11. So it might be the most precise to say "ISO C" instead of for instance "C11", as the standard evolves continously. Of course this could be stated more elaborately in the text (e.g. "the at any time latest version of ISO C", but maybe it is okay and precise enough to just say "ISO C". Jhertel (talk) 15:47, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Another option is to use the term "clean C" as described by one of the Lua authors in the following discussion http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2010-06/msg00491.html, where he also mentions that Lua conforms to C89, perhaps "clean C" needs is own wiki page also.--DevelCuy (talk) 23:00, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I also would like to mention that Lua is compatible with "freestanding compilers", see for reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4998822/what-parts-of-c-are-most-portable that means compiler only provide <float.h>, <limits.h>, <stdarg.h>, and <stddef.h> in order to make source code portable to any C89 compiler. So I would replace: "Lua is ... written in ISO C" by "Lua is ... written in clean C(subset of C 89) compatible with freestanding compilers".--DevelCuy (talk) 23:25, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Extensible semantics?

Would someone be able to explain what this means? I see it does not connect to an article that can explain the phrase. I would suggest that it be reduced in emphasis, so I just removed the link and changed it to "extensible" capabilities. This article should be aimed at general consumption. Elcidia (talk) 00:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Lua & malware

According to Wired, components written in Lua have been found in the Flame malware; I'll return later to expand and add to the article. //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 17:08, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion for adding Garry's Mod to the list

I know the list of software isn't meant for video games, but Garry's Mod is all about Lua, it's not just like a tool for developers.
This is just a suggestion, I don't know what you think about it, I want to hear feedback before do anything. --Stijn Brouwer (talk) 14:38, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Dominic Li

There used to be a mention of a "Dominic Li" in the authors (not sourced). I removed it because I am almost sure no such person ever contributed to Lua. Reasons: 1) I have been following the Lua mailing list for years and I have never heard of him 2) He is not listed on http://www.lua.org/thanks.html or http://www.lua.org/authors.html 3) that mention was added by an unidentified IP address. Feel free to re-add him if you can find a valid source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Catwell2 (talk • contribs) 16:48, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

That text was added in this edit (21:15, 6 January 201) by an IP who has made no other edits—it's good to find the bad edit if possible, to see if any other damage was done (in this case, no). Thanks for fixing the obvious problem. Johnuniq (talk) 00:35, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Logo should point to Commons version

The Lua logo used in the article is hosted in English Wikipedia only, but there is a version for everybody in Commons: commons:File:Lua-logo-nolabel.svg. What is the process for requesting the change? The content of the article is the same, File:Lua-logo-nolabel.svg should be deleted to let the Commons version show up.--QuimGil (talk) 22:25, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I've tagged it with the {{Now Commons}} template. Found through Wikipedia:Guide to image deletion#Speedy deletion. --4th-otaku (talk) 11:51, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Reader feedback: I found everything but you h...

94.14.86.140 posted this comment on 28 April 2013 (view all feedback).

I found everything but you haven`t worded it easily enough for me to understand so word it out more simply

Any thoughts?

sounds like a generic request to WP:MTAU. Perhaps it warrants a {{Technical}} tag. -- Nczempin (talk) 20:05, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

LuaJIT?

Does LuaJIT use a virtual machine like Java? How does it work? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.222.35.121 (talk) 22:05, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

http://google.com/search?q=How%20does%20LuaJIT%20work Is it really that hard to do some research? It will take time :p Unit158 (talk) 04:04, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps this sort of information should be part of the article. Nczempin (talk) 20:06, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Scripting language vs. programming language.

Isn't Lua a scripting language rather than a programming language? The Lua website (link here) says so: "Lua is a powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language." I don't mean to be nitpicking here, but there's a difference between the two. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.26.104.62 (talk) 01:07, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

It is under certain circumstances, maybe. For an encyclopedia, it should be noted as an interpreted programming language. Unit158 (talk) 03:46, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

There really isn't a difference between the two, and even if there is, no two people can agree what that difference is anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.176.129 (talk) 02:03, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

A scripting language is a special case of a programming language. When trying to emphasize the distinction, terms like "compiled language" or "non scripting language" are used. Nczempin (talk) 20:09, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Erm, no. The term "scripting language" isn't formally defined and no two people will quite agree what it means. Also, for the record, Lua could be considered a "compiled language" too, since standard Lua compiles to bytecode and LuaJIT has multiple compilation phases (first bytecode, then partial machine code). There are too many subtleties and too little consensus to nail these terms down. This should be considered in any attempt to describe them, otherwise you are just being a crank. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.9.176.129 (talk) 20:45, 15 March 2014 (UTC)