[Paper Reading] The Implementation of Lua 5.0

Ierusalimschy, R., De Figueiredo, L. H., & Celes Filho, W. (2005). The Implementation of Lua 5.0. J. UCS, 11(7), 1159-1176.

Introduction

Main novelties:

• Register-based virtual machine
• Optimized tables
• Closures
• Coroutines

Values

Dynamically-typed language, basic types:

• nil
• boolean: true, false
• number: double (float/long)
• string: arrays of bytes
• table: associative arrays
• function
• userdata: pointers to user memory blocks: heavy, subject to garbage collection; light, freed by user
• thread: coroutines

typedef struct {
    int tag;  /* Identify the type */
    Value v;
} TObject;

typedef union {
    GCObject *gc; /* strings, functions, heavy userdata and threads */
    void *p;  /* light userdata */
    lua_Number n;  /* numbers */
    int b;  /* booleans */
} Value;

Tables

Hybrid: hash part and array part

Growth of array part:

• at least half the slots between $1$ and $n$ are in use
• at least on used slot between $n/2+1$ and n <script type="math/tex" id="MathJax-Element-50">n</script>

Hash part: uses a mix of chained scatter table with Brent’s variation

Functions and Closures

Implement closures: upvalue,
flat closures

Threads and Coroutines

create, resume, yield

interpreter cannot use its internal C stack to implement calls in the interpreted code

uses C stack to keep track of the stack of active coroutines at any given time

cactus structure

The Virtual Machine