Plua is a port of the programming language Lua 5.0.3, along with a small IDE, for the Palm Computing platform. Lua is a programming language designed at TeCGraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group of PUC-Rio, Brazil. Plua includes some extensions to Lua to better support the Palm platform.
Contents
Development has ceased on Plua, and the latest stable version of Plua 2.0 can only be downloaded from a discussion board. The prior version, Plua 1.1, is a port of Lua 4.0. The extensions differ somewhat between versions. The new version is thus sometimes called Plua 2 to avoid confusion.
Sample code, Plua 1
The compiler and interpreter is approximately 150 KB, and the compiled helloworldApp.prc shown below is approximately 2 KB.
The classic hello world program (in the old version) can be written as follows:
This text will be saved as a normal memo in the Palm, and executed by tapping the "Run" button in the IDE. Alternatively, the program can be compiled into a PRC (Palm OS Program File, which is executable on any Palm Platform, provided that the runtime program is present) from the same IDE.
A breakdown of the program:
Sample code, Plua 2
The equivalent program with the new extensions can be written as follows:
A breakdown of the program: The first line comment is the same as before, but the rest is a little different.