Footnotes

...syntax
As usual, a means 0 or more a's, a means an optional a and a means one or more a's.
...functions
Actually, a function definition is an assignment to a global variable; see Section 3.
...skipped
This facility allows the use of Lua as a script interpreter in Unix systems.
...fails.
Notice that this behaviour is different from regular pattern matching, where a * expands to the maximum length such that the rest of the pattern does not fail.