Your First Program

Printing to the Console

The first thing we'll do is get Luau to say something. The print() function does exactly that — it takes whatever you give it and outputs it to the console.

Create a new file called main.luau and write this:

print("Hello, world!")

Then run it with your runtime:

lune run main.luau
# or
zune run main.luau
# or
lute run main.luau

You should see Hello, world! printed in your terminal. That's it — you just ran your first Luau program.

You can print pretty much anything. Numbers, text, multiple values at once:

print("Hello, world!")
print(42)
print("My name is", "Luau")

When you pass multiple values separated by commas, print() outputs them on the same line with a tab between each one.

Comments

Comments are lines that Luau completely ignores when running your code. They're for you — notes, explanations, reminders, whatever you need.

There are two ways to write them.

A single-line comment starts with --:

-- This is a comment, Luau won't run this
print("This runs fine") -- You can also put comments at the end of a line

A multi-line comment uses --[[ to open and ]] to close:

--[[
    This is a multi-line comment.
    Everything in here is ignored.
    Great for longer notes.
]]
print("This still runs")

Get into the habit of leaving comments as you write code. Future you will appreciate it.