7: Introduction to TSP operation Model 2461 Interactive SourceMeter® Instrument
7-12 2461-901-01 A/November 2015
Lua basics
This section contains the basics about the Lua programming language to allow you to start adding
Lua programming commands to your scripts quickly.
For more information about Lua, see the Lua website (http://www.lua.org). Another source of useful
information is the Lua users group (http://lua-users.org), created for and by users of Lua programming
language.
Comments
Comments start anywhere outside a string with a double hyphen (--). If the text immediately after a
double hyphen (--) is anything other than double left brackets ([[), the comment is a short comment,
which continues only until the end of the line. If double left brackets follow the double hyphen (--[[),
it is a long comment, which continues until the corresponding double right brackets (]]) close the
comment. Long comments may continue for several lines and may contain nested [[ . . . ]] pairs.
The table below shows how to use code comments.
Using code comments
Type of
comment
Comment
delimiters
Usage Example
comment
comment text fits
--Turn off the front-panel display.
Long
comment
Use when the
comment text is
longer than one
--[[Display a menu with three menu items.
If the second menu item is selected,
the selection will be given the value
Function and variable name restrictions
You cannot use Lua reserved words and top-level command names for function or variable names.
Variable names must contain at least three characters.
The following table lists some of the Lua reserved words. If you attempt to assign these, the event
code -285, "TSP Syntax error at line x: unexpected symbol near 'word' " is displayed, where word is
the Lua reserved word.
Lua reserved words