If you've ever used a programming language before, you might be able to jump right in with the documentation: http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/

Otherwise, since I'm assuming you haven't, there are a few resources on the Lua site, and some other Lua projects that you might be interested in, where you can practice.
Of course, the best way to learn is to look at some good existing code. Just looking through it and reasoning it out can go a long way towards learning a new programming language.

http://www.lua.org/pil/

http://love2d.org/

http://lua-users.org/wiki/SampleCode

I just read all of 1.1 to 4.3.4 and thats when I got confused.

It assumes you already know what 4 is. can you explain in english how 'for' works.

And also to clairify, lets say I want to make a variable, called bob, and i want bob to be 4, do i just type Bob = 4 and need nothing else? also if I have 2 lua scripts runing, and one defines bob, can the other script check bob?

for <local variable to define as the key>,<local variable to define as the value> in pairs(mytable) do code end

pairs/ipairs gets the pairs or iterated pairs of a table, the key and value.

That's a generic for.

A numeric for works sort of like this--

for <local variable to use as an iterator>=<value to start at>,<value end the for statement at>,<value to increment iterator by each loop> do stuff end

kind of similar to

[local variable to use as an iterator] = 1
while ([local variable to use as an iterator]<[value to end the for statement at]) do
[local variable to use as an iterator] = [local variable to use as an iterator] + [value to increment iterator by each loop]
end

yes

so in other words, 'for' is just to take redundant references of a table, and just make a series? I'm not quite sure I follow this...

so... If i have lua in an MOSR that says Bob = 1, and then another object says If bob = 1, it will work?

from what I read, if bob = nul, then bob doesn't exist

, wouldn't an If bob = something statement crash if bob = nul? just to verify.

In other words, a global variable is existent if (and only if) it has a non-nil value.

for the variable question, in 1.2 it says which is what I was referring to. if its nil, it doesn't exist. if a variable doesn't exist, what happens if you check for it? just variable = nil I'm just trying to make sure I don't crash my comp when I start actually coding.

and secondly, could you maybe simplify 'for' because I really don't get it. something about the wording just messes with me. maybe in english without psudo code

"For In Layman's Terms"

You've got some code. It says this:


What this means is, for every occurence of X in the list called Y, do whatever comes next.