MAN page from Fedora 13 lua-5.1.4-4.fc12.x86_64.rpm
LUAC
Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: $Date: 2006/01/06 16:03:34 $
Index NAME
luac - Lua compiler
SYNOPSIS
luac[
options] [
filenames]
DESCRIPTION
luacis the Lua compiler.It translates programs written in the Lua programming languageinto binary files that can be later loaded and executed.
The main advantages of precompiling chunks are:faster loading,protecting source code from accidental user changes,andoff-line syntax checking.
Pre-compiling does not imply faster executionbecause in Lua chunks are always compiled into bytecodes before being executed.luacsimply allows those bytecodes to be saved in a file for later execution.
Pre-compiled chunks are not necessarily smaller than the corresponding source.The main goal in pre-compiling is faster loading.
The binary files created byluacare portable only among architectures with the same word size and byte order.
luacproduces a single output file containing the bytecodesfor all source files given.By default,the output file is namedluac.out,but you can change this with the-ooption.
In the command line,you can mixtext files containing Lua source andbinary files containing precompiled chunks.This is useful to combine several precompiled chunks,even from different (but compatible) platforms,into a single precompiled chunk.
You can use'-'to indicate the standard input as a source fileand'--'to signal the end of options(that is,all remaining arguments will be treated as files even if they start with'-').
The internal format of the binary files produced byluacis likely to change when a new version of Lua is released.So,save the source files of all Lua programs that you precompile.
OPTIONS
Options must be separate.
- -l
- produce a listing of the compiled bytecode for Lua's virtual machine.Listing bytecodes is useful to learn about Lua's virtual machine.If no files are given, thenluacloadsluac.outand lists its contents.
- -o file
- output tofile,instead of the defaultluac.out.(You can use'-'for standard output,but not on platforms that open standard output in text mode.)The output file may be a source file becauseall files are loaded before the output file is written.Be careful not to overwrite precious files.
- -p
- load files but do not generate any output file.Used mainly for syntax checking and for testing precompiled chunks:corrupted files will probably generate errors when loaded.Lua always performs a thorough integrity test on precompiled chunks.Bytecode that passes this test is completely safe,in the sense that it will not break the interpreter.However,there is no guarantee that such code does anything sensible.(None can be given, because the halting problem is unsolvable.)If no files are given, thenluacloadsluac.outand tests its contents.No messages are displayed if the file passes the integrity test.
- -s
- strip debug information before writing the output file.This saves some space in very large chunks,but if errors occur when running a stripped chunk,then the error messages may not contain the full information they usually do.For instance,line numbers and names of local variables are lost.
- -v
- show version information.
FILES
- luac.out
- default output file
SEE ALSO
lua(1)
http://www.lua.org/ DIAGNOSTICS
Error messages should be self explanatory.
AUTHORS
L. H. de Figueiredo,R. Ierusalimschy andW. Celes
Index
- NAME
- SYNOPSIS
- DESCRIPTION
- OPTIONS
- FILES
- SEE ALSO
- DIAGNOSTICS
- AUTHORS
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