Icy North Technologies

Use lua_next.

Under Linux and Mac OS X, I get

-100, -100, 4294967196, ffffff9c, FFFFFF9C

Anyway, %u, %x, %X only handles unsigned numbers.

Try the globals script in the Lua demo: http://www.lua.org/demo.html

Use the registry or any other table to cache the script functions. So when you want to run a script, first test whether there's a function store at the key given by the script name. If there isn't, lu ...

luaL_loadstring returns a function corresponding to the body of the script.
luaL_loadstring does not run the script.
So, simply save the function left on the stack by luaL_loadstring and run it as m ...

Since Lua can be built both as C and C++, there's mechanism one for C (via longjmp) and one for C++ (via exceptions).

Either build Lua as C or change luaconf.h to use longjm even for C++.

Set a count hook for a large count and raise an error inside the hook.

Try this:print(coroutine.resume(co))

There is no other way. Again, why do you need it?

This number is not known internally. Why do you need it?

Another way I've seen mentioned to drive a GUI is to respond to GUI events asap by enqueuing them in a Lua queue and then handling the queued events in Lua using coroutines.

contacts = { people = { } } works fine.

You can write contacts.people[3].name, which is nicer to read.

Doesn't this work?
table.insert(contacts["people"], {name = "beth", age = 19 })