Since Lua is a very good language for beginners, I was hoping there would be a instructions for dummies to install on windows in this book. What Ive done so far is to unzip the lua binarys (using Power Archiver)to a lua directory I created by right clicking on the desktop. The books says that unzipping the tarball file gives a
lua5.1
bin
Win32

directory stucture. Well I didnt get that, I just got the 4 files that are supposed to be in the Wing32 file by themselves. And the windows binarys only came as a zip file, not a tarball. So I copied those 4 files by right click/copying them into a directory I made called utility and then changed the name of the 3 files by right click/renaming them. I also set the utility directory in the system path, and it seems to work ok as I can type lua into the command window and the lua interpreter comes up. So now I want to set user enviornment variables, but Im afraid it wont work because I have a different directory structure. Here are the enviorment variables as stated in the book:
UTIL_DIR=c:\program files\utility
LUA_DIR=c:\program files\lua\5.1
LUA_CPATH=?.dll;%LUA_DIR%\?.dll
LUA_PATH=?.lua;%LUA_DIR%\?.lua

But notice is the second one it has a backslash between lua and 5.1, whats that about, is there a seperate directory called 5.1? Remember I have no directorys inside my lua directory.

And to make these variables, I suppose on the last one LUA_PATH is the variable name and ?.lua;%LUA_DIR%\?.lua is what I put as the target, right? Well thats about it, I hope someone can make sense of this.

Hi Brad,

You're right, there is no directory structure in the new Lua
binaries zip file. The file lua5_1_1_Win32_bin.zip at

  http://luaforge.net/

contains the files

  luac5.1.exe
  bin2c5.1.exe
  lua5.1.exe
  lua5.1.dll

> So I copied those 4 files by right click/copying them into a
> directory I made called utility and then changed the name of the
> 3 files by right click/renaming them.

The book recommends that you rename lua5.1.exe to lua.exe, and
rename luac5.1.exe to luac.exe. However, you can't rename
lua5.1.dll because lua.exe looks for it by its original name.
Versions of luac.exe downloaded after 14 March 2007 no longer
depend on lua5.1.dll. You can disregard bin2c5.1.exe.

> I also set the utility directory in the system path, and it seems
> to work ok as I can type lua into the command window and the lua
> interpreter comes up.

Good. You're all set to proceed with all of the material in the
first half of the book.

> So now I want to set user enviornment variables, but Im afraid it
> wont work because I have a different directory structure.

The extra 'lua\5.1' directory really only matters when you start
using Lua modules. The whole idea is to keep Lua modules in a
directory that is not part of the Windows search path. The book
recommends that you create a directory named 'c:\program
files\lua\5.1' to hold modules. First, create a directory named
'lua' directory in the 'c:\program files' directory, and then
create a directory named '5.1' in the 'c:\program files\lua'
directory. Once these directories have been created, you can set up
your environment variables.

> And to make these variables, I suppose on the last one LUA_PATH
> is the variable name and ?.lua;%LUA_DIR%\?.lua is what I put as
> the target, right?

Exactly.

  Variable name: UTIL_DIR
  Variable value: c:\program files\utility

  Variable name: LUA_DIR
  Variable value: c:\program files\lua\5.1

  Variable name: LUA_CPATH
  Variable value: ?.dll;c:\program files\lua\5.1\?.dll

  Variable name: LUA_PATH
  Variable value: ?.lua;c:\program files\lua\5.1\?.lua

Good luck!

--
Kurt

Thanks much Kurt! Im really looking forward to this book.