Using Lua with C++: A short tutorial

Using Lua with C++: A short tutorial

 

Written by Christian Stigen Larsen < csl@sublevel3.org>

 

Using Lua is easy! In this short tutorial we'll show how to write a fully working host-program in C++ with Lua callbacks.

Since the static Lua libraries are written in C, you must import them as such:

extern "C" {
#include "lua.h"
}

int main() {
  lua_State *L = lua_open();
  lua_close(L);
  return 0;
}

 

Compiling and linking with GNU g++:

g++ host.cpp -o host -Ilua-5.0.2/include/ -Llua-5.0.2/lib/ -llua

 

Including lualib.h and lauxlib.h makes it easy to write a fully working host:

#include <iostream>

extern "C" {
#include "lua.h"
#include "lualib.h"
#include "lauxlib.h"
}

void report_errors(lua_State *L, int status) {
  if ( status!=0 ) {
    std::cerr << "-- " << lua_tostring(L, -1) << std::endl;
    lua_pop(L, 1); // remove error message
  }
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  for ( int n=1; n<argc; ++n ) {
    const char* file = argv[n];

    lua_State *L = lua_open();

    luaopen_io(L); // provides io.*
    luaopen_base(L);
    luaopen_table(L);
    luaopen_string(L);
    luaopen_math(L);
    luaopen_loadlib(L);

    std::cerr << "-- Loading file: " << file << std::endl;

    int s = luaL_loadfile(L, file);

    if ( s==0 ) {
      // execute Lua program
      s = lua_pcall(L, 0, LUA_MULTRET, 0);
    }

    report_errors(L, s);
    lua_close(L);
    std::cerr << std::endl;
  }

  return 0;
}

 

Compilation and linking:

g++ host.cpp -o host -Ilua-5.0.2/include/ -Llua-5.0.2/lib/ -llua -llualib

 

Let's test this with some Lua programs. The files here are from the distribution, hello.lua is simply:

-- the first program in every language
io.write("Hello world, from ",_VERSION,"!/n")

 

Executing a couple of Lua programs with our host program produces:

[csl@eris:~/dev/lua/lua-5.0.2]$ ./host test/hello.lua test/printf.lua
-- Loading file: test/hello.lua
Hello world, from Lua 5.0.2!

-- Loading file: test/printf.lua
Hello csl from Lua 5.0.2 on Wed Mar  2 13:13:05 2005

 

It gets very interesting when Lua programs call your own functions. In the following program, we define a function my_function() and register it with the Lua environment using lua_register(). Our function prints its arguments as strings and returns the integer value of 123.

#include <iostream>

extern "C" {
#include "lua.h"
#include "lualib.h"
#include "lauxlib.h"
}

int my_function(lua_State *L) {
  int argc = lua_gettop(L);

  std::cerr << "-- my_function() called with " << argc
    << " arguments:" << std::endl;

  for ( int n=1; n<=argc; ++n ) {
    std::cerr << "-- argument " << n << ": "
      << lua_tostring(L, n) << std::endl;
  }

  lua_pushnumber(L, 123); // return value
  return 1; // number of return values
}

void report_errors(lua_State *L, int status) {
  if ( status!=0 ) {
    std::cerr << "-- " << lua_tostring(L, -1) << std::endl;
    lua_pop(L, 1); // remove error message
  }
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  for ( int n=1; n<argc; ++n ) {
    const char* file = argv[n];

    lua_State *L = lua_open();

    luaopen_io(L); // provides io.*
    luaopen_base(L);
    luaopen_table(L);
    luaopen_string(L);
    luaopen_math(L);
    luaopen_loadlib(L);

    // make my_function() available to Lua programs
    lua_register(L, "my_function", my_function);

    std::cerr << "-- Loading file: " << file << std::endl;

    int s = luaL_loadfile(L, file);

    if ( s==0 ) {
      // execute Lua program
      s = lua_pcall(L, 0, LUA_MULTRET, 0);
    }

    report_errors(L, s);
    lua_close(L);
    std::cerr << std::endl;
  }

  return 0;
}

 

Let's write a small Lua program test.lua to call my_function():

io.write("Running ", _VERSION, "/n")
a = my_function(1, 2, 3, "abc", "def")
io.write("my_function() returned ", a, "/n")