Plua is a port of the programming language Lua 5.0.3, along with a small IDE, for the Palm Computing platform. Lua is a programming language designed at TeCGraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group of PUC-Rio, Brazil. Plua includes some extensions to Lua to better support the Palm platform. Development has ceased on Plua, and the latest stable version of Plua 2.0 can only be downloaded from a discussion board. The prior version, Plua 1.1, is a port of Lua 4.0. The extensions differ somewhat between versions. The new version is thus sometimes called Plua 2 to avoid confusion.

Language resources

Plua has some special functions, or extensions, to support the Palm platform, including:

Sample code, Plua 1

The compiler and interpreter is approximately 150 KB, and the compiled helloworldApp.prc shown below is approximately 2 KB. The classic hello world program (in the old version) can be written as follows: This text will be saved as a normal memo in the Palm, and executed by tapping the "Run" button in the IDE. Alternatively, the program can be compiled into a PRC (Palm OS Program File, which is executable on any Palm Platform, provided that the runtime program is present) from the same IDE. A breakdown of the program:

Sample code, Plua 2

The equivalent program with the new extensions can be written as follows: A breakdown of the program: The first line comment is the same as before, but the rest is a little different.