Rules

Rules are what transform Lua code. When processing code with darklua, it is essentially going through a given list of rules one by one, each one transforming code and feeding it to the next rule.

Important note: one thing to understand is that the ordering of these rules sometimes have importance! For example, you should inject a value before trying to compute expressions statically, or optimize if branches out.

Rule Format

Rules can be written in two different formats: the shortest format consists of simply providing the rule name. When using this format, any parameters the rule have will use its default value.

For example, the remove_empty_do rule does not have any parameters, so it can be specified in the configuration file as:

{
  rules: ["remove_empty_do"],
}

If a rule can be configured, the object format can be used to override each parameter. The rule name must be specified with a field named rule. Then, simply enumerate the property name associated with its value.

For example, the rename_variables rule can optionally rename the function names. To do that, the rule must be written using the object format and by defining the include_functions field.

{
  rule: "rename_variables",
  include_functions: true,
}

Information on the built-in rules and their configuration properties can be found here.