Lua 是一个小巧的脚本语言。是巴西里约热内卢天主教大学（Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro）里的一个研究小组，由Roberto Ierusalimschy、Waldemar Celes 和 Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo所组成并于1993年开发。 其设计目的是为了嵌入应用程序中，从而为应用程序提供灵活的扩展和定制功能。Lua由标准C编写而成，几乎在所有操作系统和平台上都可以编译，运行。Lua并没有提供强大的库，这是由它的定位决定的。所以Lua不适合作为开发独立应用程序的语言。Lua 有一个同时进行的JIT项目，提供在特定平台上的即时编译功能。-Lua is a small scr ipting language. The Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro) in a research team, led by Roberto Ierusalimschy, Waldemar Celes, and Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo, and in 1993 formed the development. Its purpose is to design embedded applications, so as to provide a flexible application extension and customization features. Lua is written in C by the standard in almost all operating systems and platforms can be compiled and run. Lua does not provide a strong library, which is determined by its location. So Lua does not fit as a standalone application development language. Lua has a simultaneous JIT project, providing a specific platform in-time compilation functionality.