We are able to take a bit of the long-windedness of the "if, else" statement away by using conditional assignment.

a=1

b=(a==1) and "one" or "not one"

The code above is the same as the code below.

a=1

if a==1 then

b = "one"

else 

b = "not one"

end

As you can see conditional assignment removes a lot of unnecessary code.

The combination of if, elseif, and else now give us more than 2 options, we can have as many cases as are required.

c=3

if c==1 then

print("c is 1")

elseif c==2 then

print("c is 2")

else

print("c isn't 1 or 2, c is "..tostring(c))

end

The if statement coupled with the else keyword now gives us 2 options that allows for multiple outcomes based on the conditions we are testing against.

b="happy"

if b=="sad" then

print("b is sad")

else

print("b is not sad")

end

The following words are all reserved for internal functions in Lua.

• and, 
• break, 
• do, 
• else, 
• elseif, 
• end, 
• false, 
• for, 
• function, 
• if, 
• in, 
• local, 
• nil, 
• not, 
• or, 
• repeat, 
• return, 
• pairs,
• then,
• true, 
• until, 
• while

These words cannot be used for variable names, but Lua is case sensitive, so 'and' is reserved and can't be a variable, but 'aND, aNd, AND, anD, AnD, And, ANd' are not reserved and can be used as variables.