3.4 – Querying the Stack

To check the type of a stack element, the following functions are available:

       int lua_type            (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_isnil           (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_isboolean       (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_isnumber        (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_isstring        (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_istable         (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_isfunction      (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_iscfunction     (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_isuserdata      (lua_State *L, int index);
       int lua_islightuserdata (lua_State *L, int index);

These functions can be called with any acceptable index.

lua_type returns the type of a value in the stack, or LUA_TNONE for a non-valid index (that is, if that stack position is “empty”). The types returned by lua_type are coded by the following constants defined in lua.h: LUA_TNIL, LUA_TNUMBER, LUA_TBOOLEAN, LUA_TSTRING, LUA_TTABLE, LUA_TFUNCTION, LUA_TUSERDATA, LUA_TTHREAD, LUA_TLIGHTUSERDATA. The following function translates these constants to strings:

       const char *lua_typename  (lua_State *L, int type);

The lua_is* functions return 1 if the object is compatible with the given type, and 0 otherwise. lua_isboolean is an exception to this rule: It succeeds only for boolean values (otherwise it would be useless, as any value has a boolean value). They always return 0 for a non-valid index. lua_isnumber accepts numbers and numerical strings; lua_isstring accepts strings and numbers (see 2.2.1); lua_isfunction accepts both Lua functions and C functions; and lua_isuserdata accepts both full and light userdata. To distinguish between Lua functions and C functions, you can use lua_iscfunction. To distinguish between full and light userdata, you can use lua_islightuserdata. To distinguish between numbers and numerical strings, you can use lua_type.

The API also contains functions to compare two values in the stack:

       int lua_equal    (lua_State *L, int index1, int index2);
       int lua_rawequal (lua_State *L, int index1, int index2);
       int lua_lessthan (lua_State *L, int index1, int index2);

lua_equal and lua_lessthan are equivalent to their counterparts in Lua (see 2.5.2). lua_rawequal compares the values for primitive equality, without metamethods. These functions return 0 (false) if any of the indices are non-valid.