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5 – The Auxiliary Library

The auxiliary library provides several convenient functions to interface C with Lua. While the basic API provides the primitive functions for all interactions between C and Lua, the auxiliary library provides higher-level functions for some common tasks.

All functions and types from the auxiliary library are defined in header file lauxlib.h and have a prefix luaL_.

All functions in the auxiliary library are built on top of the basic API, and so they provide nothing that cannot be done with that API. Nevertheless, the use of the auxiliary library ensures more consistency to your code.

Several functions in the auxiliary library use internally some extra stack slots. When a function in the auxiliary library uses less than five slots, it does not check the stack size; it simply assumes that there are enough slots.

Several functions in the auxiliary library are used to check C function arguments. Because the error message is formatted for arguments (e.g., "bad argument #1"), you should not use these functions for other stack values.

Functions called luaL_check* always raise an error if the check is not satisfied.

luaL_buffinitsize
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_buffinitsize[-?, +?, m] char *luaL_buffinitsize (lua_State *L, luaL_Buffer *B, size_t sz);

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luaL_prepbuffer
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_prepbuffer[-?, +?, m] char *luaL_prepbuffer (luaL_Buffer *B); Equivalent to

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luaL_error
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_error[-0, +0, v] int luaL_error (lua_State *L, const char *fmt, ...); Raises an error. The

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luaL_requiref
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_requiref[-0, +1, e] void luaL_requiref (lua_State *L, const char *modname, lua_CFunction

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luaL_loadbuffer
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_loadbuffer[-0, +1, –] int luaL_loadbuffer (lua_State *L, const char *buff,

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luaL_buffinit
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_buffinit[-0, +0, –] void luaL_buffinit (lua_State *L, luaL_Buffer *B); Initializes a buffer B

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luaL_addchar
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_addchar[-?, +?, m] void luaL_addchar (luaL_Buffer *B, char c); Adds the byte c

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luaL_checktype
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_checktype[-0, +0, v] void luaL_checktype (lua_State *L, int arg, int t); Checks whether the

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luaL_prepbuffsize
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_prepbuffsize[-?, +?, m] char *luaL_prepbuffsize (luaL_Buffer *B, size_t sz); Returns an address

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luaL_addstring
  • References/Lua/Lua/Auxiliary Library/Functions and Types

luaL_addstring[-?, +?, m] void luaL_addstring (luaL_Buffer *B, const char *s); Adds the zero-terminated

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