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Variables in Lua are global by default. Prefer local for everything — global state is almost always a bug magnet.

local name = "Ada"
local age  = 36
local pi   = 3.14159

Lua has 8 types: nil, boolean, number, string, function, userdata, thread, table. Numbers are 64-bit floats by default (Lua 5.3+ also distinguishes integers internally).

Reassignment is just =. Multiple assignment is built in:

local a, b = 1, 2
a, b = b, a   -- swap