hello, world!

Following the tradition of introducing programming languages, we start with "hello, world!". However, instead of writing a program to directly output this sentence, we need to implement a minimal Lua interpreter to interpret and execute the following Lua code:

print "hello, world!"

Although this code is simple, our minimal version of the interpreter will still contain the complete process of a general-purpose interpreter, including steps such as lexical analysis, syntax analysis, bytecode generation, and virtual machine execution. In the future, as long as features are added on the basis of this process, a complete Lua interpreter can be gradually realized.

However, this Lua code is not as simple as it seems. It contains many concepts such as global variables (print), string constants ("hello, world!"), standard library (print) and function calls. These concepts depend on Lua's internal concepts such as values and stacks. Being able to interpret and execute this code gives you an intuitive understanding of how the interpreter works.

In order to complete this interpreter, this chapter first introduces the necessary knowledge of compilation principles. This should be the only theoretical part in the entire series of articles, and it may also be the section with the most errors. It then introduces the two core concepts of bytecode and value. Then gradually implement lexical analysis, syntax analysis and virtual machine. Finally, an interpreter (only) capable of executing the above Lua code is completed.