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Fengari

# Fengari 🐺 φεγγάρι - The Lua VM written in JS ES6 for Node and the browser This repository contains the core fengari code (which is a port of the Lua C library) which includes parser, virtual machine and base libraries. However it is rare to use this repository directly. - To use fengari in a web browser as easily as you might use JavaScript, see [fengari-web](https://github.com/fengari-lua/fengari-web) - [fengari-interop](https://github.com/fengari-lua/fengari-interop) is a lua library that makes interoperating with JavaScript objects simple, it is already included in fengari-web. - For a clone of the `lua` command line tool, but running under node.js, see [fengari-node-cli](https://github.com/fengari-lua/fengari-node-cli) ### The JS API Once you've loaded fengari, you can use the JS API: ```javascript const luaconf = fengari.luaconf; const lua = fengari.lua; const lauxlib = fengari.lauxlib; const lualib = fengari.lualib; const L = lauxlib.luaL_newstate(); lualib.luaL_openlibs(L); lua.lua_pushliteral(L, "hello world!"); ``` The JS API is exactly the same as the C API so `fengari.lua` exposes the same constants and functions as `lua.h`, `fengari.lauxlib` the same as `lauxlib.h` and `fengari.lualib` the same as `lualib.h`. If you're unfamiliar with the C API, you can take a look at [the manual](http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#4). ## Semantics Fengari implements Lua 5.3 semantics and will hopefully follow future Lua releases. If you find any noticeable difference between Fengari and Lua's behaviours, please [report it](https://github.com/fengari-lua/fengari/issues). ### Strings Lua strings are 8-bits clean and can embed `\0`. Which means that invalid UTF-8/16 strings are valid Lua strings. Lua functions like `string.dump` even use strings as a way of storing binary data. To address that issue, Fengari uses [`Uint8Array`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Uint8Array) objects containing the raw bytes to implement lua strings. To push a JS string on the stack you can use `lua_pushliteral` which will convert it to an array of bytes before pushing it. To get a Lua string on the stack as a JS string you can use `lua_tojsstring` which will attempt to convert it to a UTF-16 JS string. The latter won't give you what you expect if the Lua string is not a valid UTF-16 sequence. You can also convert strings with `luastring_of`, `to_luastring`, `to_jsstring` and `to_uristring`. ### Integers The JS number type is always a double, and hence cannot accurately represent integers with more than 53 bits. As such, we've taken the route of a rarely used define (`LUA_INT_TYPE=LUA_INT_LONG`) in the PUC-Rio sources, where floats are doubles, but integers are 32 bits. ### `require` and `package.loadlib` In the browser `require` and `package.loadlib` try to find a file by making synchronous XHR requests. ### _Missing_ features - `lua_gc`/`collectgarbage`: Fengari relies on the JS garbage collector and does not implement its own. - The following functions are only available in Node: - The entire `io` lib - `os.remove` - `os.rename` - `os.tmpname` - `os.execute` - `debug.debug()` doesn't work from web workers due to lack of a method to get synchronous user input - [Weak tables](http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#2.5.2) - `__gc` metamethods ### _Differences_ - `package.jspath` instead of `package.cpath` - `LUA_JSPATH_DEFAULT` instead of `LUA_CPATH_DEFAULT` (and contains .js extensions rather than .so or .dll extensions) - `lua_tointegerx` and `lua_tonumberx` do not have out-parameters indicating conversion success. Instead, ``false`` is returned when conversion fails. - `luaL_execresult` takes an extra argument: an error object. The error object should have a fields `status`, `signal` and `errno`. - `luaL_fileresult` takes an extra argument: an error object. The error object should have a field `errno`. ## Extensions ### `dv = lua_todataview(L, idx)` Equivalent to `lua_tolstring` but returns a [`DataView`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/DataView) instead of a string. ### `lua_pushjsfunction(L, func)` Alias for `lua_pushcfunction`. ### `lua_pushjsclosure(L, func, n)` Alias for `lua_pushcclosure`. ### `lua_atnativeerror(L, func)` Sets a function to be called if a native JavaScript error is thrown across a lua pcall. The function will be run as if it were a message handler (see https://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/manual.html#2.3). The current message handler will be run after the native error handler returns. ### `b = lua_isproxy(p, L)` Returns a boolean `b` indicating whether `p` is a proxy (See `lua_toproxy`). If `L` is non-null, only returns `true` if `p` belongs to the same global state. ### `p = lua_toproxy(L, idx)` Returns a JavaScript object `p` that holds a reference to the lua value at the stack index `idx`. This object can be called with a lua_State to push the value onto that state's stack. This example would be an inefficient way to write `lua_pushvalue(L, 1)`: ```js var p = lua_toproxy(L, 1); p(L); ```` ## NYI - `io.input()`: partially implemented - `io.lines()` - `io.open()` - `io.output()`: partially implemented - `io.popen()` - `io.read()` - `io.tmpfile()` - `file:lines()` - `file:read()` - `file:setvbuf()` - `file:__gc()` ## References - [Source code for Lua 5.3](lua.org/source/5.3/) - [Lua 5.2 Bytecode and Virtual Machine](http://files.catwell.info/misc/mirror/lua-5.2-bytecode-vm-dirk-laurie/lua52vm.html) - [Lua 5.3 Bytecode Reference](http://the-ravi-programming-language.readthedocs.io/en/latest/lua_bytecode_reference.html) - [A No-Frills Introduction to Lua 5.1 VM Instructions](http://luaforge.net/docman/83/98/ANoFrillsIntroToLua51VMInstructions.pdf)