Module system

Platform independent system calls for Lua.

environment Functions

getenv (name) Gets the value of an environment variable.
getenvs () Returns a table with all environment variables.
setenv (name[, value]) Sets an environment variable.

random Functions

random ([length=1]) Generate random bytes.

term Functions

isatty (file) Checks if a file-handle is a TTY.

time Functions

gettime () Get system time.
monotime () Get monotonic time.
sleep (seconds[, precision=16]) Sleep without a busy loop.


environment Functions

getenv (name)
Gets the value of an environment variable.

NOTE: Windows has multiple copies of environment variables. For this reason, the setenv function will not work with Lua's os.getenv on Windows. If you want to use setenv then consider patching os.getenv with this implementation of getenv.

Parameters:

  • name string name of the environment variable

Returns:

    string or nil value of the environment variable, or nil if the variable is not set
getenvs ()
Returns a table with all environment variables.

Returns:

    table table with all environment variables and their values
setenv (name[, value])
Sets an environment variable.

NOTE: Windows has multiple copies of environment variables. For this reason, the setenv function will not work with Lua's os.getenv on Windows. If you want to use it then consider patching os.getenv with the implementation of system.getenv.

Parameters:

  • name string name of the environment variable
  • value string value of the environment variable, if nil the variable will be deleted (on Windows, setting an empty string, will also delete the variable) (optional)

Returns:

    boolean success

random Functions

random ([length=1])
Generate random bytes. This uses CryptGenRandom() on Windows, and /dev/urandom on other platforms. It will return the requested number of bytes, or an error, never a partial result.

Parameters:

  • length int number of bytes to get (default 1)

Returns:

    string string of random bytes

Or

  1. nil
  2. string error message

term Functions

isatty (file)
Checks if a file-handle is a TTY.

Parameters:

  • file file the file-handle to check

Returns:

    boolean true if the file is a tty

time Functions

gettime ()
Get system time. The time is returned as the seconds since the epoch (1 January 1970 00:00:00).

Returns:

    number seconds (fractional)
monotime ()
Get monotonic time. The time is returned as the seconds since system start.

Returns:

    number seconds (fractional)
sleep (seconds[, precision=16])
Sleep without a busy loop. This function will sleep, without doing a busy-loop and wasting CPU cycles.

Parameters:

  • seconds number seconds to sleep (fractional).
  • precision integer minimum stepsize in milliseconds (Windows only, ignored elsewhere) (default 16)

Returns:

    true on success, or nil+err on failure
generated by LDoc 1.4.6 Last updated 2023-12-15 13:15:09