[ambulatorybird]

Just chiming in as another Lua fan; I really like it because it's like the Scheme of imperative scripting languages. And while we're passing around links to papers, I've found the following the be good for additional insight:

Lua Performance Tips: (http://www.lua.org/gems/sample.pdf)

A No-Frills Introduction to Lua 5.1 VM Instructions: (http://luaforge.net/docman/view.php/83/98/ANoFrillsIntroToLu...)