30. Lua data types reference

This section describes the data structures used. Complex types (beyond booleans, numbers, or strings) are represented by tables.

30.1. Address

The debugger uses internal addresses, composed of a numeric value, memory type, and optional bank number. In Lua, addresses are represented by a table with these fields:

Table 30.1 Address type

field	type	description
formatted	string	The complete print value of the address location.
address	integer	The raw address bits of the location.
memory	string	The kind of the memory the address points to, can typically be “code” or “data” (string).
bank	integer	The bank number, or nil if this address location does not have any bank associated with it.

The formatted field is set when the value is returned to Lua. If you provide an address as an argument to a function call in the API, you do not need to provide a formatted field.

30.2. Adapted MI functions

Many Lua functions are adapted from machine interface (MI) commands, used for communication between a debugger front end (like VS Code) and the debugger.

Functions are available in the db table. The Lua interface translates arguments for these functions and passes them to the debugger command handler.

Results are passed back and translated to Lua. As the underlying mechanism is a command protocol, the result table is a bit more elaborate than what might be expected.

A top-level result has the following fields:

field	type	description
class	string	The result class (e.g., done for success, error for failures). A complete list is below.
value	integer	The result, which depends on the function called.
type	string	The reply type. For function calls, this is result.