How can I end a Lua thread cleanly?

c++, lua, multithreading, scripting, terminate

Solution

You can use a hook to callback to C every time lua executes a line of the script. In this hook function you can check if the user wanted to quit, and call lua_error if they did.

static bool ms_quit = false;

void IWantToQuit()
{
    ms_quit = true;
}

void LineHookFunc(lua_State *L, lua_Debug *ar)
{
    if(ar.event == LUA_HOOKLINE)
        if(ms_quit == true)
            luaL_error(L, "Too Many Lines Error");
}
//...

lua_State *Lua = lua_open();
char * code;
// Initialisation code
lua_sethook(Lua, &LineHookFunc, LUA_MASKLINE, 0);
luaL_dostring(L, code);

Problem

My situation is that I'm using the Lua (C) API to execute a script held in a string. I would like the user to be able to terminate the execution of the script (this is essential if the script contains an infinite loop), how can I do this? ``` lua_State *Lua = lua_open(); char * code; // Initialisation code luaL_dostring(L, code); ```

Original source