Hello World in Lua

Every programming journey starts with “Hello, World!” This simple program demonstrates the basic structure of a Lua script and how to output text to the console.

Your First Lua Program

Create a new file called hello.lua using any text editor:

print("Hello, World!")

Save the file and run it from your terminal:

lua hello.lua

You should see:

Hello, World!

Understanding the Code

Let’s break down this simple program:

• print() is a built-in Lua function that outputs text to the console
• "Hello, World!" is a string literal containing the text to display
• The parentheses () contain the arguments passed to the function
• The line ends with no semicolon (unlike many other languages)

Interactive Mode

You can also try this in Lua’s interactive mode:

lua

Then type:

> print("Hello, World!")
Hello, World!
> 

Adding More Output

Let’s expand our program with more information:

print("Hello, World!")
print("Welcome to Lua programming!")
print("Lua version:", _VERSION)

The _VERSION variable automatically contains the current Lua version.

Comments in Lua

Add comments to explain your code:

-- This is a single-line comment
print("Hello, World!")  -- This prints a greeting

--[[
This is a multi-line comment
that can span multiple lines
Useful for longer explanations
--]]

print("Program finished!")

Running Lua Code Directly

You can also run Lua code directly from the command line:

lua -e "print('Hello from command line!')"

Next Steps

Congratulations! You’ve written your first Lua program. Next, learn about variables to store and manipulate data.

For more Lua examples and exercises, check out Lua Users Wiki.