Signals in Lua

Here’s the translation of the Go code to Lua, with explanations in Markdown format suitable for Hugo:

In Lua, we can handle signals using the luaposix library, which provides POSIX functionality. Here’s how to handle signals in Lua:

local signal = require "posix.signal"
local unistd = require "posix.unistd"

-- Function to handle the signal
local function handle_signal(signo)
    print()
    print(signal.signum_to_name(signo))
    os.exit(0)
end

-- Register the signal handlers
signal.signal(signal.SIGINT, handle_signal)
signal.signal(signal.SIGTERM, handle_signal)

print("awaiting signal")

-- Main loop
while true do
    unistd.sleep(1)
end

In this Lua script:

1. We import the necessary modules from luaposix: signal for handling signals and unistd for the sleep function.

2. We define a handle_signal function that will be called when a signal is received. It prints the name of the signal and exits the program.

3. We use signal.signal() to register our handler function for SIGINT and SIGTERM signals.

4. The main part of the program is an infinite loop that sleeps for 1 second in each iteration. This keeps the program running and responsive to signals.

When we run this program, it will block waiting for a signal. By typing ctrl-C (which the terminal shows as ^C), we can send a SIGINT signal, causing the program to print the signal name and then exit.

To run this program:

$ lua signals.lua
awaiting signal
^C
SIGINT

Note that Lua doesn’t have built-in concurrency primitives like goroutines. For more complex scenarios requiring concurrent operations, you might need to use a Lua library that provides coroutines or consider using a different programming language that better supports concurrency.