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 Integrate Lua with C++

Integrate Lua with C++

By : Wenhuan Li
4.5 (2)
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 Integrate Lua with C++

Integrate Lua with C++

4.5 (2)
By: Wenhuan Li

Overview of this book

C++ is a popular choice in the developer community for building complex and large-scale performant applications and systems. Often a need arises to extend the system at runtime, without recompiling the whole C++ program. Using a scripting language like Lua can help achieve this goal efficiently. Integrate Lua to C++ is a comprehensive guide to integrating Lua to C++ and will enable you to achieve the goal of extending C++ programs at runtime. You’ll learn, in sequence, how to get and compile the Lua library, the Lua programming language, calling Lua code from C++, and calling C++ code from Lua. In each topic, you’ll practice with code examples, and learn the in-depth mechanisms for smooth working. Throughout the book, the latter examples build on the earlier ones while also acting as a standalone. You’ll learn to implement Lua executor and Lua binding generator, which you can use in your projects directly with further customizations. By the end of this book, you’ll have mastered integrating Lua into C++ and using Lua in your C++ project efficiently, gained the skills to extend your applications at runtime, and achieved dynamic and adaptable C++ development.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
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Free Chapter
1
Part 1 – Lua Basics
4
Part 2 – Calling Lua from C++
8
Part 3 – Calling C++ from Lua
12
Part 4 – Advanced Topics

The stack

The Lua stack can serve two purposes:

  • Exchange data between C++ and Lua. Passing function arguments and retrieving function return values fit into this usage.
  • Keep intermediate results. For example, we can keep a table reference in the stack until we are done with the table; we can push some values onto the stack and then pop and use them as upvalues.

The Lua stack comes in two forms:

  • The public stack that comes with the Lua state. Once a Lua state is created via luaL_newstate or lua_newstate, you can pass the state around and the same Lua stack is accessible to all functions that can access the Lua state.
  • The private stack for each lua_CFunction call. The stack is only accessible to a function call. Calling the same lua_CFunction multiple times will not share the same stack. So, the stack that is passed to a lua_CFunction call is private to the function call.

Pushing onto the stack

You can use lua_pushXXX functions to push a value...

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