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Can anyone tell me where to find Lua's bytecode specification? I've been searching for 15 minutes, and I can't find anything.
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luac produces a single output file containing the bytecodes for all source files given. By default, the output file is named luac.
Instruction Summary Lua bytecode instructions are 32-bits in size. All instructions have an opcode in the first 6 bits. Instructions can have the following fields: 'A' : 8 bits 'B' : 9 bits 'C' : 9 bits 'Ax' : 26 bits ('A', 'B', and 'C' together) 'Bx' : 18 bits ('B' and 'C' together) 'sBx' : signed Bx.
Lua VM is a register machine. Lua's interpreter is a bytecode virtual machine. The interpreter first walks the program text to transform it into a sequence of bytecode instructions for a virtual processor, and then a simple while-switch dispatch loop is used for running the program, one instruction at a time.
For ten years (since 1993, when Lua was first released), Lua used a stack- based virtual machine, in various incarnations. Since 2003, with the release of Lua 5.0, Lua uses a register-based virtual machine. This register-based machine also uses a stack, for allocating activation records, wherein the registers live.
The official definition is in lopcodes.h.
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