Reference manuals

The official definition of the Lua language is its reference manual, which describes the syntax and the semantics of Lua, the standard libraries, and the C API.

For a detailed introduction to the practice of Lua programming, see the book Programming in Lua, also available as an e-book.

Current version

The manual for the latest version of Lua is available in English only:

5.4: english

Previous versions

The manual for Lua 5.3 is available in English and in Russian:

5.3: english · русский

The manual for Lua 5.2 is available in English, in Portuguese, and in Polish:

5.2: english · português · polski

The manual for Lua 5.1 is available in several languages:

5.1: english · português · español · deutsch · polski

Buy a copy of this book and help to support the Lua project.

Older versions

The manuals for older versions are available in English only:

5.0 · 4.0 · 3.2 · 3.1 · 3.0 · 2.5 · 2.4 · 2.2 · 2.1 · 1.1 · 1.0

These manuals are also available here in PostScript and PDF.

All reference manuals are freely available under the terms of the Lua license.