Lua integration

Use Lua for configuration/restart files instead of XML?

Pros:

• Scripting language, can perform dynamic initial data creation, declare functions to be called from Fortran code etc.
• luac (compiled lua code)
• lua itself can call c and fortran code
• lua supports arbitrary precision numbers
• lua has ISO C API, accessible from Fortran

Several ready to use interfaces are available.

• https://bitbucket.org/haraldkl/aotus/overview
• https://github.com/MaikBeckmann/f2k3-lua/tree/simple
• https://github.com/adolgert/FortLua
• http://numlua.luaforge.net/

Example in C:

• http://windrealm.org/tutorials/reading-a-lua-configuration-file-from-c.php

Printing tables:

• http://lua-users.org/wiki/TableSerialization

Passing around C structures:

• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4329643/what-is-userdata-and-lightuserdata-in-lua

Long double in Lua:

• http://lua-users.org/lists/lua-l/2010-11/msg00098.html

I managed to compile Lua using __float128 as LUA_NUMBER with only minor modifications. The result should be posted on github soon. The __float128 type is compatible with _Quad and should work with REAL(16) compiled with ifort.

WARNING: lua libraries "io" and "math" are not yet compatible with __float128.